There Should Be Stars
by varietyofwords
Summary: Chuck and Blair. Post-5x10. Alternative season five. The lightness he claimed she brought into his life is now enveloped in and lost to the darkness that is wholly and completely her. Yet even on the darkest night the stars are there burning bright and guiding lost souls through choppy, uncharted waters to terra firma.
1. Part One

**Author's Note: **I'm prefacing this chapter with the warning that this story – a rewriting of Season Five following the car accident in 5x10 – is sad. It is going to be sad. I promise there will be a happy ending, but this is a journey and the destination – while on the map – is not currently in sight.

* * *

Dark clouds move her into the shadows; the darkness holding her gently in its embrace. And the parts of her that revel in the darkness rejoice because here she can allow her fears and pain to control her. No fight or flight but the comfort of a warm blanket being tucked around as the darkness entrances her to sleep, to let go of her worries and her pain.

The gentle lull is a mirage, a snake in the garden because just as it begins to sweep her away, sweep her power away, the riptide reaches out and tries to drag her asunder. The darkness threatening to overwhelm her tightens its embrace, tightens its control, and she has to kick and thrash and fight just be able to open her eyes.

Eyelids fluttering – lashes beating against lashes – as she tries to awaken, tries to place the silence in the context of the overwhelming odor assaulting her senses. She moves her right hand ever so slightly, and her fingers scream as they are dragged over shattered glass, as the slivers slide across her knuckles. And she stops, pauses when she feels a sticky wetness seep over her fingers because it is warmer than scotch and thicker than water.

Pain tears through her body, sends her back bowing into crumbled floorboards as her muscles contract and expel and wither in anguish. And the sticky wetness clings to her fingers only to drip onto the fabric of her dress that has become bunched by the inertia of movement and torn in the crumpling of metal and the shattering of glass.

Eyelids falling – lashes beating against lashes – as the pain cripples her further, as the crunching of glass beneath feet is met with the shake of car as the bystander pulls and pulls on the jammed door and curses the way his athletic prowess fails him in the moment that matters most. He calls out her name; letters reaching her ears in a slow march that causes her to lose the first as she strings together the third and fourth.

She cannot make her mouth move, cannot call out to him. Yet the concern that she cannot reassure him evaporates with the groan emitted from somewhere near her legs and feet. And the pressure, the weight of the mass draped across the lover half of her body finally registers in her head. Awareness coming like a splash of icy water to the face, forcing the darkness to recede as she slowly, painfully lifts her head.

It falls back against the shattered glass with a groan, with the color red permanently seared on her brain. The brightness of the color mixing with the darkness of the leather and paleness of his face; running not trickling from the gash across his forehead down a sculpted cheekbone to fall and pool on the leather below. Pain rips through her again yet the image remains, and she knows she will never be able to erase the image of him bloodied and broken beside her.

Sirens wail in the distance, increasing in intensity and decibels as they approach. Letters and syllables become words; become winged prayers flying off her lips for those sirens to be for them. For someone to be coming to wipe away the blood and piece the broken parts back together in a way she does not know how.

The flashes of red, white, and blue dance along the ceiling, reflect in the whites of her eyes as people in blue and dirty yellow swarm around the vehicle. Their words muddle; their shouting commands mixing like the filling to her father's famous pumpkin pie until words like 'neck injuries' and 'blood loss' become as indistinguishable as sugar and cinnamon in the final mixture. And her fingers – covered in a sticky mixture of blood and glass – strain to find his, strain to touch him as the firemen work to pry open the driver's side door.

But a paramedic interrupts her; a woman who tries to calm and assure her with eyes trained to betray nothing. Her neck is suddenly held stiff by a brace, and she wants to tell them that her lower body hurts more than her neck. But the paramedics are accessing the scene and deciding who to move first, and her concerns for herself morph into an anxious demand that they do not choose one man over the other.

Yet no one seems to listen to her; too busy assessing the scene and gathering statements from the single witness. She's known Nate for so long that his voice rises above the others; a beacon of light against the rocky shores created by fear and pain and an indescribable emotion that overcomes her when she is moved for car to stretcher so paramedics can take her position in the vehicle in an attempt to get closer to the critically injured.

There is no time for her to call out for Nate; no time for his best friend to reach her in the dash to the ambulance. Only then do they want to listen to her, want to hear her state her name and answer their questions. But the only letters she can string together are the ones that echo in the beating of her heart.

And the paramedics latch onto the name like talons on prey. She cannot shake them, cannot appease their relentless torrent of questions as she fills in last name and birthday and next of kin and relationship because the last one seizes her heart and renders her mute. How do you describe what they are to one another? How do you describe Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck?

She wants to dig her nails into their arms as they wipe away the blood and check to make sure it's not from her. She wants to push away the gauze being pressed against her forehead. She wants to scream at them to slow down as the large vehicle bumps and jumps over potholes at maximum speed.

But the pain comes in ebbs and flows, and she panics at the empty feeling of fingers holding air and a tongue stripped of cunning wit. And everything hurts and aches but she is far too afraid to close her eyes over what she might see, over what she might be forced to relive. So she lays their eyes wide open as the world above her moves in a blur of blue uniforms, silver interiors, and then dark sky.

The doctors that greet her arrival do so in a well-practiced rundown of cause and effect, of stats and conditions before jogging her through the automatic doors and jockeying for position with the other newly arrived case. And she isn't sure if it is him or the driver until her heart lurches at the sound of his name, until she forces herself to turn her head despite the stiff brace holding her down to look at him.

Gashes are covered under a layer of white gaze, and blood was wiped away along with the tough exterior until he is nothing but the innocence and pain she has always know lurks beneath. Striped and laid bare to wires and tubes and frantic hands trying to save him. And the echo of her heart pounds in her ears, slips past her lips in an anxious and desperate cry of five letters.

"Chuck."

The flash of desperation in his eyes are echoed in the way his hand slides off the gurney, the way his fingers strain to reach her. And all she wants to do is hold his hand one more time and hear the sound of his voice, but everything becomes muffled and lost and disappears as he is raced away from her to places unknown yet clearly not good. As the dark clouds roll in once more and move her into the shadows; holding her gently in darkness' embrace only to tighten as the color red runs down sculpted thighs to fall and pool on the gurney below.

* * *

The world is bleached white; cleansed and scrubbed until it shines in bright contrast to the darkness this place is supposed to save her from. Yet its brightness and whiteness makes it seem cold and harsh and stripped of the inevitable messes that occur with life. And not even some fanciful dream where she casts herself as Audrey Hepburn's character can breathe life into this moment. Can restore some of the darkness and pain she uses these dreams to escape from to her life.

Her best friend – sunshine and perfection – is dimmed in this setting. A set of lips pulled into a grim smile; a pair of eyes filled with unshed tears. Her best friend's arms wrap around her shoulders and her face burrows into messy, unwashed hair, but the transfer of warmth from the golden girl to the dark queen does not occur because her body is cold and aching with emptiness.

Because she is unable to feel even the squeeze of Serena's hand around hers as she takes the empty seat beside her bed and assures her that her mother and father, Cyrus and Roman are on the next plane to New York. Because she does not care about the family flocking to her bedside but rather is fixated on the family – the 'us' that includes her and him and her baby – carried inside her and born out of her heart.

The tiny upwelling of hope rages against the ache between her legs and the empty feeling inside her body when the doctor enters the room and looks at her with unreadable eyes. The tiny upwelling of hope that strings together syllables and letters into a prayer. The tiny upwelling of hope that dies like an extinguished flame – quickly yet with tiny embers that burn despite the lack of oxygen – at the first seven words the doctor offers her.

"I'm sorry, Blair. You lost the baby."

And the sound that escapes and echoes about the room is the agonizing, gasping sob of a dying woman. Of a woman whose chest is collapsing around the spaces where her heart beats and her baby grew. Her hand flies to press against her chest, to press against her body as she tries to find the strength to breath or to be done with it once and for all.

But the tiny embers find fuel in her falling heart as she reaches out to slip her hand in Serena's and feel the supportive squeeze of Serena's hand around her own. Billowing forth in another tiny upwelling of hope that spurs her to ask a question she is now terrified to voice because while she will always want to know if he is hurt, she doesn't know how she will be able to live as the 'us' that includes her and her alone.

"Where's Chuck?"

Patient confidentiality silences the doctor, and it falls to her best friend – sunshine and perfection – to offer up the world just a little more darkness. To speak slowly and search for the right words to impart upon her best friend the hope she and Nate and her mother are clinging to amidst the darkness.

"B, he lost a lot of blood, and he never woke up so – it's not looking good."

And despite the whitewashed settings, the only color she can see is the one seared onto her memory as another sob tears through her empty and cold body and her hand flies to her mouth to try and stop it.

"Can I see him?"

Her question is a desperate plea of softly-spoken yet broken syllables punctuated by frantic eyes searching and yearning and imploring the doctor to give into her demands. Her fractured and broken body aches with every moment of her limbs, but she will throw back the covers and walk the entire span of this hospital if she has to because Chuck is hurt and she feels his pain just as deeply as she feels her own.

A wheelchair is eventually dispatched to carry her, to move her down the bleached hallways past the darkness and pain sequestered in every room. And she thinks for a brief moment she can be the light to pull him from the darkness as her wheelchair stops in the doorway of his room, as Lily and Nate move from beside his bed to give her a moment alone. They press kisses against her cheek, press words of how grateful they are that she's okay to her ear as they depart to give her a moment alone with him.

But when the orderly pushes her to his bedside, when she holds his hand inside her own at the announcement that she can touch him, she cannot delude herself into thinking that the crooked smile on his lips is the result of some dream or that the coldness of his hands is a function of the flimsy material of the hospital gown because he needs his long-sleeve pajamas to keep himself warm at night.

She brushes her lips and her whispered apology for all that she has done to him against the knuckles of the hand that carried her, that she had hoped and prayed would be there to catch her once more because somewhere along the way she became the coward who runs away. And she realizes that she is not okay; that the lightness he claimed she brought into his life is now enveloped in and lost to the darkness that is wholly and completely her.

* * *

Dip, soak, wring. Repeat. And she wishes she could dip her whole body in; soak herself in the antiseptic liquid until all the dirt and grime under her skin is washed away and then squeezed from her body. Until her dark thoughts are removed from her sullen soul and sent swirling down the drain away to a place where they can no longer touch him and her.

Her hands still shake as she dips the sponge into the bucket despite how frequently she has performed this task. She still needs help rolling him onto his side and striping away his flimsy hospital gown despite how she has become the best of the best, according to his night nurse. But she is gentle and soft; always careful when cleaning the inflamed skin around the drainage tube in his left side or when cleaning around the gaze wrapped around his head.

Jealousy flared the first time she watched another woman slide a sponge across his naked chest, and she had nearly ripped the sponge from Angie's hand when the woman had the gall to move further and further up his inner thigh. But Angie had just smiled, held out the sponge, and offered to teach her how to perform this important task.

She had done this once before; when he hadn't been shot and playing nurse was just another one of their games. He had stirred against her ministrations then. Risen and harden so quickly that he rolled over on top of her and sent the yellow sponge falling to the floor beside his bed with her shrieks and gasps and laughter as the soundtrack to their afternoon.

Now – when the scar tissue over his bullet wound has torn open and a piece of his skull has been removed to accommodate the swelling of his brain – there is nothing. No movements or hisses of pleasure. No fun and games. Just the harsh reality that even her hand against his naked skin cannot make him wake, cannot make him stir, and cannot make him respond to her fervent demand that he just hold her hand.

The parade of nurses and doctors in and out of his room tell her how wonderful she is with him yet gossip amongst themselves at the desk in the center of the floor about the patient in room three-twenty-three and the woman whose photograph was on the cover over every rag printed in the city. Because she holds his hand for hours on end until a blonde man or a blonde woman shakes her shoulder and encourages her to go back to her room and sleep with a solemn promise to find her should anything change. Because she slips out of his room and slips on that gaudy, canary yellow ring as she pads her way down the long hallway to her room.

The ring is an illusion, of course. Meant to deter the paparazzi who sneak onto the floor and photograph her without any concern for what she has been through. Who sell their photographs of her sans ring to so-called journalists who write articles quoting so-called close friends saying that she's had a nervous breakdown or that the man she visits every day is her lover or that her fiancé abandoned her following the loss of their child.

The later, of course, is only half true. She was lost and adrift and confused over the change in her fiancé well before the accident; the dark clouds rolling in and ready to cast her out of the light well before the car slammed into a wall at high speeds. And now he does not come because she does not want him, because she does not know how to handle the darkness of him and her on top of the fracturing of the only 'us' she's ever really wanted.

But the monsoon comes as she cleans away the grime, as she runs the sponge gently down the arm of the man who was going to be lover and husband and father and is now nothing more than an empty shell. Broken and battered and tossed about in the storm that can only calm with his three words, eight letters and his fingers tangled in hers.

The sponge falls from her hand to his chest at the sound of the heavily accented voice, and the water trickles in bedded droplets. Angie nods her head and promises to take over for the young woman with the healing scrape in the right-hand corner of her forehead and eyes wide open in surprise. The hesitation catches Angie's attention, but she bites her tongue, averts her eyes, and concentrates on wiping away the excess water instead of watching her patient's most frequent visitor join the man beside the door.

She walks alongside him in silence with one arm lying across her chest and the other clutching the panels of her robe together. The canary yellow ring is missing from her finger – tucked away in the pocket of her robe – yet she feels no desire to slip it back on her finger. And the storm continues to brew, the dark clouds rolling in as they walk side by side yet miles apart back to her room.

The room where even the pungent smell of roses and lilies is not enough to remove the cloister of sorrow this place has become. The room she should have been discharged from days ago was it not for her body's refusal to heal. And no amount of flowers can cauterize the gaping wound inside her soul. Not even the purple hyacinth – a floral expression of sorrow and apology – whose petals he now fingers as he stares anywhere but at her.

"Hyacinth, particularly the purple variety, means—"

"My favorite flower is the peony," she interrupts in a reminder because white or red or pink, the peony can mean anything and everything given the moment and the giver. A wide variety of three words, eight letters – _I like you; I miss you; I want you; I hate you; I am sorry; I love you_.

And however soft she means the reminder to be, the darkness twists her words to be vicious and cruel. One last reminder that he will never know her or understand her, that she will trade more than just hyacinth for peonies tonight.

"Don't give up on your fact over someone else's fiction."

His words are spoken softly and with tight control and fall like the wilting petals slipping out of his fingers. She raises her brow, furrowing it in a confused look that tears at the healing scab in the corner of her forehead. A tiny trickle of blood slides down her temple yet he does not step forward to wipe it away and barely even bothers to look at her with a leveled gaze.

"You were on your way to the consulate."

A statement of fact confirmed by the driver who escaped with minor cuts and bruises thanks to a seatbelt and an airbag and was all too willing to sell his story to the highest bidder. He does not need her confirmation yet her hand still tightens around her robe as though she means to keep him from stripping her bare.

"The paparazzi—there are pictures of the two of you."

Blurry photographs of the future Princess of Monaco kissing Manhattan's King of Darkness snapped up by his mother's publicity team. Held in reserve should the relationship sour and the Grimaldi family need more than just a prenuptial agreement to keep the wayward American in line.

"You were going to take our baby and run away with him."

His sentence strips her bare and leaves her standing naked and bare under his gaze. The verbal reminder of her reckless plan that cost her everything and sent her back to where she started pressing down harshly on the bruises covering her body.

"These are my facts. The rest – you and I – is just fiction."

"Louis—"

She stutters out yet she does not step towards him, does not try to comfort him or assuage him with the touch of her hand to his cheek. And he interrupts her as he marches on with the diatribe he wrote in the time they spent apart where news of the 'us' that includes her, him, their baby, and her lover slowly trickled in.

"The light and perfect person you present yourself as is fiction. It's someone else's fiction. But this – the darkness and the scheming and the parts of you that love him – is fact. Your fact. His fact. My fact."

Her eyes close at his words filling her vision with darkness as she swallows the heavy lump in her throat that only adds to the burden carried in her chest. Her eyes open at her own words yet the darkness does not recede because there is nothing light about their situation.

"What are you saying?"

"I don't want to pretend anymore, to give up on your fact for my fiction because that person I thought I could love doesn't exist and I already lost my child to your darkness."

His words shred her; his blame tearing open wounds that have not even begun to heal. Because how will she ever get over what she has done? How can dispute the facts as fiction when everything he says is true? How can she dream about a life with Louis when she dreams about the 'us' that includes Chuck and her and her baby even in the midst of this nightmare?

"The consulate will release a statement explaining how the accident made us reevaluate our relationship and conclude that we are not meant to be. The paparazzi will probably continue for the next week or two given that I am leaving for Monaco in the morning."

And then he is walking away from her without a kiss goodbye to her forehead or a declaration of everlasting love as he makes her choice for her. She does not watch him leave. Only calls out to him to stop when her hand slides to her pocket and the ring brushes against her bruised knuckles. She holds it in the palm of her hand curling her fingers around it and squeezing tightly.

The ring drops from her hand to his palm and then is squirreled away in his pocket never to be seen on her finger again. Because the ring – despite its coloring – is not the beacon of light in her darkness and does not guide her through the rocky shores. She is already empty and cold and cast adrift in a dark, turbulent sea where the lifeboat offered by a man who only _thinks_ he could love her is riddled with holes and sure to sink.

The door is left open in his departure and she stares out not to watch him leave but because her best friend is peeking her head around corner and staring back at her. The coffee the blonde left to buy so she wouldn't have to be present while her brother was stripped naked and wiped clean rolls in her belly – the hot contents scalding still – as she step into the room, as she sees the tears clinging to the corner of the brunette's eyes.

"You okay?"

"Louis and I aren't engaged anymore."

The broken confession sends her into Serena's embrace, and her tears fall onto the blonde's leather jacket as Serena coos in her ear her apology and tries to soothe her with the rub of her hand up and down her back. She feels tiny and weak and fragile and clings desperately to the blonde as she tries to make sense of her life. Her baby is dead, her fiancé is gone, and the love of her life-

"I don't—I have more important—"

"How is Chuck? Did he, uh, enjoy the sponge bath?"

The blonde's questions are breathed into her ear, and she can feel the grimace against her hair with the second question. It is meant to be funny; a joke repeated from the past where she would share and Serena would recoil in disgust.

And then Serena – sunshine and perfection – is passing along fanciful ideas that the lack of a ring might be more than enough to wake him as she cajoles Blair to leave this cloistered prison. An arm tucked around her shoulders holding her close and supporting her onward, she returns down the long hallway that gleams with the fiction of happy outcomes.

Yet her steps falter when she hears the frantic beeping of the machines and sees men and women running so quickly that their scrubs blur into streaks of blue before her eyes. The darkness in the form of helplessness consumes her as she watches with wide eyes brimming and filling with tears. A strangled sob wracks her body as the heart monitor flatlines, as the other half of their shared soul is pushed and prodded and shocked in attempt after attempt to reignite the flame. And as Serena pulls her back into her embrace and tucks her head to her chest in an attempt to shield her from the sight, a dark and desperate prayer escapes her lips.

"Please, God, you have my baby. You can't take Chuck, too."


	2. Part Two

The darkness ebbs and flows; chased away by the bright light shining in his eyes only to consume him again when the light moves across the bridge of his nose. Fingers prying open his eyelids pry him from the darkness yet everything is a series of shapeless blobs and hazy movements. Heavy eyelids fall when the gloved fingers propping them open move away to shift the light from one eye to the next. He fights against the darkness, against the weight and desire to sleep just a little bit longer as he forces himself to open his eyes and blink.

Once.

The light appears with the shrill ring of the telephone, and he strains against the darkness to hear the words being spoken in anger. A terse hello met by the slam of the telephone when the caller refuses to answer. And the darkness is trying to lull him back to sleep – a beckoning call to lie down his burdens and pain once more – but the familiarity of the terse voice is louder still and cuts through the fog and the haze to reach out and entrant him to step away from the ledge and head towards the light.

"Mister Bass," an unfamiliar voice calls out. "Can you hear me, Mister Bass?"

Prying open his jaw is an excruciating process; his joints locked stiff from lack of movement and use. The letters of the words he wants to say scratch and claw and demand to be set free, and he tries to swallow, to wet his throat so the words can find their way out. Yet everything is parched and dry and aches with even the smallest intake of air.

Hands slip into his, but their fit is wrong. Bones scraping against bone and roughness when there should be softness. And everything is wrong because the fingers that lace around his are too fat or too thin and squeeze too tightly or too loosely. He pulls his hands away because he doesn't want to hold hands with these people, and the action causes the murmur of anxious voices to rise because jerky movements of rejection might be a better sign than a simple squeeze of fingers.

"Charles?"

The distressed voice is all too familiar, and he fights against the consuming darkness to recognize and respond to the speaker. But his burdens and pain are heavy weights dragging him down, and he fumbles and stumbles on the edge as he loses his footing. The clouding fog is obscuring his view; blanketing him and coddling him and telling him that he could sleep forever if he would just take one more step to the right.

The wind carries away the voices in a muddled melody that sweeps past his ears and threads through his hair before becoming lost in the soft caress of her fingers against his neck, in the hard tugs of her hand in his hair as she forces him to look at her and become lost in deep brown eyes. Her face is sharp and clear; her smile flawless and wide with laughter.

But the creeping darkness strips her of her smile and causes his hands to flail and search and yearn in a desperate attempt to reach her. Her disappearance is all too familiar; a taunting reminder that sends his heart pounding – the machine beeping louder with the uptick in his heart rate – and eyes flying open straining to find her amongst those crowded around his bed.

His adoptive mother – blonde hair and anxious wrinkles smoothed away by Botox – repeats his name once more in a gasp of delight. But the word he speaks in a croaked whisper – five letters scratching his throat and leaving a bloody trail in their wake as they pass – causes her eyes to soften and advert from his gaze.

A strangled sob escapes as the last vestiges of his heart blacken and wither and die with the answer to his unspoken question. The sound of a desperate and dying man who sees his reality written across their faces and no longer has the strength to continue on as the sole entity he was before she came into his life with lightness and love and a million other pleasurable things money can give him.

Because this – this is the darkest thought he's ever had and the one person who can reach out and pull him into the light isn't here. Because the butterflies that mercilessly beat inside his stomach for days, weeks, months, years are curling in their wings and falling to the pit of his stomach in a million tiny deaths.

"She's okay."

Relief floods through him, and the sustenance and the light needed to peel open a million cocoons and send the butterflies soaring and beating furiously against him once more is provided at Nate's answer of two words, eight letters. But his relief runs into a dam of wonderment as to where she might be and what exactly 'okay' means that stops him cold.

"Blair's okay. She's – she was discharged a couple days ago."

The doctor steps in at that moment and tells him not to strain his vocal chords, but he has more questions than answers and he ignores the screams of his taxed and parched voice as he voices every letter and word and thought running through his head. His own condition can wait until he learns about hers, until he is assured that 'okay' means minor cuts and bruises because they had been mid-kiss when the town car slammed into the wall and he had tried so very hard to shield her and keep her from tumbling and falling and slamming into the seats in front of them.

But Serena looks at him and his world seems to skip a beat and falter in its rotation. Her bright blue eyes shine behind a layer of unshed tears; her blonde hair falling in tangled waves from nights spent alternating between sleeping in chairs and pacing anxiously for any news.

"The baby—it didn't make it."

And the 'us' that includes him and her and her baby fractures and falls apart with her words. He wants to run to her and hold her in his arms and kiss salty tears off her cheeks until he becomes parched and dehydrated. But he only needs to look from Serena to Nate to Lily – three gazes averted from his in a cowardice betrayal – to know that possibility has disappeared with the 'us' he tried so hard to fight for. To know that she packed her bags and fled to places unknown leaving every part of him broken and fractured and hurting in her wake.

* * *

Broken ribs fuse back together; gaping wounds stitched and closed back together. Drainage tubes removed and the amount of gauze wrapped around his head is diminishing day after day. His physical therapist is a real hard ass; far meaner than the junior high gym teacher who made him play soccer and lacrosse despite his (forged, of course) doctor's note. Checks and insults his muscle tone without understanding that he's never been athletic.

At least, nothing that involves removing his scarf.

The parade of friends and Humphrey in and out of his room is a coordinated attempt on Lily's part to lift his spirits. His doctors had pulled the former Mrs. Bass aside one day and said that his body would heal only as far as he mentally wants it to.

And now he can set his clock by their schedule: Mondays where Nate blathers on about his investigation into the crash; Tuesdays where Lily tells him about Bass Industries having stepped in during his recovery; Wednesdays where Rick the torturer comes up with some new exercise; Thursdays where Dan offers him a copy of _Inside _the audiobook to pass the time; and Fridays where Serena rolls her eyes in disgust when he half-heartedly, salaciously suggests she give him a sponge bath.

Gossip Girl is silent Monday through Sunday. The few times he manages to steal their phones and access the internet gives him the same message over and over again: that Gossip Girl offers her deepest condolences to Chuck and Blair. Nate is the first to crack and explain that Gossip Girl shut down her site following the accident stymieing his attempts to locate the culprit behind the purposely damaged car.

The only break in his schedule is the shrill ring of the telephone at random times of the day that sends his friends and Humphrey scrambling to answer the phone. The caller never answers their terse 'hello'; a frustrating occurrence they all attribute to teenagers pulling pranks or journalists looking for an exclusive. The phone is never offered to him and he never asks because the only one he wants to talk to has obviously abandoned her phone given the way her voicemail has stopped allowing callers to leave a message.

Tonight, the shrill ring of the telephone causes his head to pound and throb as he slides his gaze from the muted television mounted to the wall to the beige telephone placed beside his bed. He contemplates answering the phone as it rings once and then twice because there is no one else to answer it for him; friends and Humphrey sent home to afford him the peace and quiet he needs to sleep.

Of course, he doesn't sleep. Not really, anyways, because he hasn't been able to dream unafraid since he was nineteen. And the parts that ache with worry and pain and longing do not leave him when his friends and Humphrey leave him for the night.

Yet incessant ringing has him ignoring the way his body hurts and aches with each straining reach. The phone presses against the bandage wrapped around his head; the gauze muffling the sounds emitting from the receiver.

Not that there are any because his 'hello' is unanswered, and he clears his throat – the scratchiness still there despite the fluids being pumped into his body – before repeating himself loudly and more forcefully for a second time. He is about to hang up, to slam the down in a frustrated sigh when he hears the sharp intake of air on the other end of the line.

And for just a moment he wonders if his ears are playing tricks on him because the gasp of surprise over the sound of his voice throws him back to the dark recesses of his memory. Because he knows the iterations of every sharp intake of air from sexual purrs to surprised delight to sad gulps of air. Because he knows her better than he knows himself.

"Blair."

Her name is a breathy whisper; the sound of his lungs gasping for air as his chest finally begins to expand once more. Her intake of air morphs from sadness to surprise to disbelief that he can identify her based on a single expel of air through an antiquated telephone line.

"Where are you, baby? Why didn't you come to me?"

The term of endearment hasn't been associated with her for years, and the choking sob he receives in reply sends him cursing and swearing for using it in the face of so much darkness. The sound of her anguish causes his chest to tighten once more in panic and fear and overwhelming concern for her that coils around his heart and chokes off his air supply. And her despair becomes the rhythm of his heartbeat; pounding so loudly in his ears that the sound begins to tear away at the melodic sound of her laugher and the sultry sound of her purring in his ear.

"Please, Blair, just tell me where you are. If you've gone back to Louis—"

"I have to go."

Her interruption is punctuated with a fresh round of tears and gasp that fails to stifle their fall. He's never heard her cry so hard in his entire life. Not the night her father left her mother for a male model. Not the nights – because there will always be more than one – he made the biggest mistake of his life.

"I just – I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

And the rage at her words flares inside him; tearing through him to add a malicious bite onto the end of his syllables. He wishes he could the swallow the venom behind them himself rather than projecting it at her, but experience has taught him that one can never okay when they lose Blair Waldorf.

"Okay? How could I ever be okay? You aren't here. I thought you had—"

His chest tightens at the thought, and he cannot bring himself to voice the darkest thought he has ever had. The reality of her not being here, of hearing her voice from places unknown is at least marginally better than the thought that she has been lost to him forever. Because death will always prevent two people who are meant to be together from ever finding their way back.

"Just because we can't be together doesn't mean I won't love you."

"Blair—"

But the dial tone buzzing in his ear is her reply to his desperate plea, and he clings to until the hospital operator comes on the line and asks him if he needs assistance in placing a call. The darkness threatening to overwhelm him once more is pushed aside for just a moment as the operator attempts to reconnect the call yet returns with a vengeance at the sigh of apology in his ear.

"I'm sorry, sir. That call came from a blocked number. I cannot reconnect you with your party."

* * *

Silence accompanies darkness. Both enveloping him in their embrace as he moves from hospital room to his empire with a bag of prescription drugs and strict instructions not to partake in alcohol and to return in two weeks for a follow-up visit. Lily – worry lines deep despite the Botox injections – locks the drugs away from his reach and expands the schedule to include nurses – the big, beefy kind who wear scrubs instead of white dresses barely covering their assets and have no tolerance for his nonsense – to administer the medications.

Lily knows his reputation and has already seen one child slide into the darkness of depression and searched the room of another for the tools by which she masks her pain one too many times. She will not lose another child to this darkness.

Monkey barks furiously upon his return and runs with nails scraping against the floor in a desperate desire to greet him. He nearly trips Nathaniel as the blonde man assists his master into bed, but the proximity to his master sends him whimpering and curling into his master's side as his master's emotions overwhelm the mangy mutt. And Serena has to guide her mother out of the apartment towards the elevator because the sight of this weak and broken and hurting man unable to draw strength from his beloved companion robs Lily of all the air in her lungs.

Nate returns to the investigation spread out across the pool table in their absence and spends hours combing through the police report until his eyes begin to ache with the strain and the information begins to overlap and tangle in his head. Running a hand through his hair, his eyes dart across the living room to the leash left on the bar top for the doorman's use and he snatches it without a second thought.

"Hey, Monkey."

The leather leash in his hand is held up and shook in an enticement for Monkey to join him. The dog, however, cares more for his master than chasing after squirrels, and he runs his head along Chuck's chest in a blatant rejection of Nate's offer of a walk. But fingers stroke his floppy ears in appreciation before nudging him towards Nate, and his attempt to bury his head into his master's side is met with a verbal rebuttal.

"Go on, Monkey."

A forlorn look is tossed in his direction as the mutt stands slowly and then leaps off the bed to amble over to Nate. The leash is hooked to his collar; a necessary action because Nate practically has to drag the dog out of the room.

"Your cellphone and wallet are on the bar. Arthur picked them up from the hospital today. Call me if you need anything."

Fingers flutter in the air in a wave goodbye and eyes close at the sound of Nate's retreating footsteps and Monkey's nails scraping across the floor in a refusal to leave. The chime of the elevator as the doors slide shut behind them sends his eyes opening and his legs draping over the edge of the bed. He slowly heaves himself to a seated position on the edge of the bed and presses a hand against the stitches across his head that throb with movement.

Of course, the parts that really throb – the parts that are broken and fractured and bleeding – are out of reach. Buried under the silk of his pajamas and the roughness of skin still mending from cuts and bruises; contained behind walls meant to save him from sorrow that only serve to lock away his pain from those trying to help him. These are the parts that ache as he slowly eases himself off the bed and shuffles out of his bedroom.

He avoids looking at his appearance in the mirror as he passes by because he doesn't want to see the physical reflection of everything he feels. See the patch of hair gone from his scalp where the surgical nurse shaved his head during pre-op. See the meticulous row of stitches where he was cracked open in a frantic search to find and stop the bleeding. See the gaunt and haggard man he has become.

The smoothness of his movements is gone. The hydrocodone and oxycodone and other codones coursing through his system cause jerky movements that send the liquid spilling over the edge of the glass until it becomes a river of scotch down the expanse of the bar. And he would swear if he cared. Instead, he watches silently as the mess spreads and runs directly into the plastic bag placed at the far end of the bar.

Fingers snag the corner of the bag and flatten the label so as to make the words – the name of the hospital stamped in big, block letters with his name handwritten below – scrawled across it legible. Fingers let go as though he has been burned when eyes land on the date where he had everything and lost it all again in an instant.

The scotch continues to run down the bar and drips onto his lap in a steady rhythm that leaves his pajama pants soaked. He should move away and grab a towel, should mop up the mess before it permeates the plastic bag.

Yet he continues to stare at the contents sealed away in the bag. Stomach rolling and tighten and bile rising at the thought that the wallet is stained darkly with the blood of the 'us' that included him, her, and her baby. Because the police informed him of how they had found him draped across her body and the silence fills in the holes of their story with a taunting reminder of dark weight crushing petite lightness.

Of fingertips reaching out in a desperate search. Of his name being called out over the sirens and the beeping of machines and the hustle of doctors and nurses around him. Of fleeting lights diminishing in the consuming, omnipresent darkness.

The bag is pushed away and falls to the stool beside him in a tumbling flip; the blackened screen of his BlackBerry surfacing to the top and staring back at him. And the parts of him he keeps locked away rage behind their jail cells for him to rip open the bag and check the log of callers. For his heart to see what his brain already knows: that the only name he wants to see will not be listed among them, that she ducked out of his life with a cryptic goodbye, that the phone—

This is not his cell phone. Make and model and color all the same but without the scratch above the screen from when it fell out of his pocket onto the observation deck of the Empire State Building in an anxious scramble to check the time. Without the chip in the bottom right-hand corner from when it slammed into the pavement during his motorcycle ride in California.

The realization sends him tearing open the bag with his teeth when his shaky hands fail him. The bloodstained wallet falls to the floor; a demand to be picked up unpalatable and unanswered. The BlackBerry in his hand flashes with a low battery warning as he turns it on, but the warning is replaced by a lock screen meant to keep her communications private from prying eyes and those that only want to use the information to dethrone her.

The month and day of Audrey Hepburn's birthday unlocks the phone on the first try because she may be the greatest mystery of his life but there are some parts of her that will always be predictable. The phone buzzes incessantly in his hand with the notification of one missed call and one unopened text and one unheard voicemail after another and then the demand that he delete voicemails and text messages to create space for more messages from those looking for her..

And he has no idea what he's looking for as he scrolls past the names of those who love and adore here and of those eager to find out where she fled to and trade that information for their fifteen minutes of fame. But there are messages she has refused to delete even as her popularity soared and as time slipped through her fingers. The drunk blathering of her best friend where beneath slurred words are forthright and honest confessions of how much Serena loves and admires the woman suffering from a deep lack of self-esteem that she tries to hide between bitchy words and even bitchier actions.

Yet buried between the messages from Serena is one that gives him pause, that interrupts the silence as he clicks on the message and holds the phone to his ear. The time and date are reiterated to him; an insignificant Tuesday in a month and a year that has long since passed. The automated voice tells him the message is less than twenty seconds long, and he wonders why she would keep this particular message after all this time when the tight coil around his heart tightens further at the sound of his own voice.

"_I love you, too, Blair."_

"Chuck! What are you doing?"

The full glass of scotch is torn away from him and held out of his reach as though he is a child and Serena is his mother. A role play he once would have suggested in a smarmy tone and now doesn't have the stomach to say as his voice from years ago repeats in his head and echoes in the beating of his heart.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?"

"Aren't I already dead?"

His biting remark causes her to pause in her diatribe, and her eyes to soften in that pitying look he neither wants nor needs. What he wants is sunshine Barbie and eternal optimism. What he needs is the Serena that followed her best friend to a helipad and told her to stay, the Serena that tracked him down in Paris and tried to make him stay, the Serena that fights for her friends and tries to offer them hope when they have none left.

"Are you really going to wait a year to hear the letter she's too prideful and too hurt to send?"

Confusion becomes etched into her face at his question until the memory dawns on her like the sun rising on a new day. The memory of a moment between insults and life ruining and bitchiness where the parts of her best friend few actually get to see were stripped bare and laid out there in front of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park on a rainy day. His voice is calm and collected, but his tone is laced with bitterness and sadness and all the emotions included in the original letter.

"Dear Serena, my world is falling apart and you're the only one that would understand. I feel like screaming because I don't have anyone to talk to. My baby is gone. Chuck is dying. Why did you let me leave without saying goodbye? You're supposed to be my best friend. I miss you so much. Love, Blair."

"Chuck—"

"It amazes me that after twenty-one years, you still can't speak Waldorf."

His comment is cold and calculating and sends Serena reeling. Snatching the half-empty bottle of scotch of the bar, he shuffles towards the kitchen as she throws one protest after another after him. The bottle is uncorked and its contents poured down the drain; swirling smoothly as it washing away his and her excuses.

"She called me."

A pause in surprise over his confession; a softening of her eyes once more. A little bit of envy and hurt raging because Serena's supposed to be her best friend and she hasn't heard from her since they watched him be rolled into surgery.

"She's bleeding in some dark alley. Alone. Already halfway to changing her name and disappearing forever. And you and I both know our world isn't the same without her in it."


	3. Part Three

**Author's Note: **To assuage any concern, I will affirm that I will not be pursuing Dan and Blair romantically in this story.

* * *

_The wailing cry parts through the dense fog like a beam of sunlight; the sound wrapping like tendrils of silky hair around her ears as it entrances her to wake. The pitch and tone and intensity never change, and her whole body seems to heave forward in attempt to fulfill that longing demand to be held and cuddled close. The darkness flees as fingers tear off the mask over her eyes and the heavy duvet is pushed aside. _

_The bed is empty beside her; a fact that causes to her to fumble even as the cry assaults her ears once more. Slippers and robe are left draped across the chaise lounge in the corner of the room, and any need to make herself presentable is left behind as she moves across the room towards the door. _

_Yet no matter how many steps she takes and no matter how quickly she moves, the space between her and the door never diminishes. The cry echoes over and over again; eats her from the inside out until she tears at her hair and cries out four letters carried below her heart for too few weeks and five letters carried in her heart for far too long._

_The silence in reply is deafening; the darkness crowding in to fill the void left behind. And she thinks that if she was just a little bit quicker or just a little bit stronger or just a little bit brighter then she could-_

The frantic pounding awakens her with a start and pulls her from her daily nightmare. There is no sunlight streaming through the windows; the heavy curtains pulled tight plunging her further into the darkness. Fingers slides against the crumpled sheets over the sticky mess of crushed chocolate – torn wrappers crinkling at her movements and the phone purposely left off the hook beeping monotonously over and over again – as she searches for the corner of the duvet, grasps tightly, and pulls it over her head.

The heavy weight is a comfort for she can blame it for the crushing pressure on her chest. And under the duvet she can pray for the opulent door to hold and for the intruder to leave her alone because, at least under here, her darkness and pain is contained to a space where it cannot touch and torment and tarnish anyone else.

Yet the voice accompanying the persistent pounding rings clearly through the heavy duvet and even heavier door. The kind of relentless, omnipresent calling that cuts through the darkness and peels back the corner of the duvet until her space is invaded and she can no longer ignore it. The covers are pushed aside; her only friend's gold box falling from the bed to the floor with a thud.

Her movements are sluggish across the floor, and the figurative trail of blood left in her wake could very well be literal from the way her body aches and cries and bleeds with every step. Her hand curls loosely around the handle of the door and is met with another knock and another sharp demand for her to open up. An exhausted shudder of air from her lips blends with the whoosh air as the door is cracked open just wide enough for her to peer out at those demanding to be let in.

For once, the difference in height between them is gone for her high heels – toes scuffed from running so hard and so far – lie abandoned on the other side of the room. Soft, worried eyes devoid of their trademark twinkle level with those that are dark and dead like charred wood ravished by forest fires. Standing tall and proud one day only to burn and fall in the ravishing caused by an unexpected lighting strike or a carelessly disposed cigarette.

A tree bent under the relentless and ominous storm laying siege; a tree ready to snap as the hurricane known as Eleanor whirls past father and daughter – because the designation of 'step' is superfluous in the face of Mother Nature – and enters the room without an invitation.

"Mother."

Her greeting is mumbled without the chilling tone she used to employ when her mother stepped into her territory because she is so tired. So very, very tired. And the unyielding gaze that notices oily hair cascading down her back in knots and the outbreak of acne across the unwashed skin of her face has the power to tear her apart. To snap the bending tree in half without concern for the destruction left in her wake.

But Eleanor's eyes sweep to her daughter's flannel pajamas – the unflattering, oversize kind that hang like drapery – and soften immediately in response as she steps towards her daughter and envelops her in a hug. Tender and soft with a hand that strokes unwashed hair without acidic words of criticism in favor of the soft cooing of a mother longing to transport her child back to the days when a Band-Aid and a kiss could heal every injury and scrape.

"Oh, my darling. Oh, my darling Blair."

And all the questions she has about how they found her are vanished as her mother's familiar scent surrounds her and holds her and pushes away the darkness because sometimes an imperfect mother is better than no mother at all. And Cyrus joins their hug without his trademark statement because those in the room are already smothered with the knowledge that hugs are not enough in the face of such tragedy.

At least, not today. Not in middle of a hotel room in Prague where their adored and cherished daughter lay broken and bleeding unable to face the light of day because only in the darkness can she watch the movie of her life – the perfect rendition where the bad is edited out – that no one else can see.

* * *

A hand is placed against her forehead as though she is five and will cry if shampoo ends up her eyes. She wonders briefly if the sting of the concoction in her eyes just might be enough to wash away the blinding flash of the cameras that greeted her arrival at her childhood home. She wonders for just a moment if there is a shampoo strong enough to clean away the red stain she sees each time she closes her eyes. The gentle trickle of water over her head answers her questions and reminds her that the cut across her forehead may have healed, but there are parts still broken and bleeding under her skin that water and soap cannot reach.

Fingers run through each strand of her hair to make sure all the suds are washed out; fingertips rough from years of physical labor working through like a comb. And no words are spoken and no emotions betrayed as she clutches her knees tighter to her body and sends the water sloshing against the edge of the tub. The most luxurious bathrobe she owns is held open to her; the maid's eyes averted for privacy as she stands and slips her arms through the sleeves.

A hand is placed against her back to guide her through the open door to the vanity in her room as though she is five and needs to be reminded that it is time to get dressed for school. Her hair hangs damply against her neck; a dark, wet stain spreading across the back of the robe. Her pale reflection in the mirror fades further against the vibrant color of her robe and begins to match the white towel wring the water from her hair.

"All better, Miss Blair."

The innocence behind Dorota's comment is more painful than the Polish maid realizes, and the words spoken in gentle earnest send a flood of emotions coursing through her because it is not better. Because it will never be better. Because no amount of water and shampoo can wash away the stain from her heart.

The brush and comb are swept from the vanity and into Dorota's hand as though she is five and needs her maid to help her style her hair. But the brush of Dorota's belly against her arm as the maid reaches sends a jolt of realization that she is not five and being prettier than Serena is no longer her biggest concern.

Her eyes flash in the mirror; color and fire return as she grabs onto Dorota's hand in a silent command for her to stop. And then she turns in her seat – wet hair flinging droplets of water onto the mirror – and her eyes turn to stare at the swell of Dorota's belly.

Other than a handful of moments where she pretended to be carried away by emotions that made her forget the distinction in their stations, she has so very rarely touched the maid that the reverent placement of her hand against Dorota's swelling frame surprises them both. Older eyes watching as her charge's hand presses gently.

The resounding kick in reply sends her hand flying away. Once upon a time, the fairytale moment of her life was when she would lie awake at night and marvel over the bubbles floating inside her stomach. She was never sure if the bubbles were from something she ate or the movements of the baby inside her. The book said one thing; the Internet said another. But her fairytale ended up being complicated and—

"You are dismissed, Dorota."

There are no words the maid can say; the icy dismissal speaks volumes. The softening of her eyes is reflected in the mirror as she sets the comb and brush back in place on the vanity in a meticulous, straight line and moves towards the bathroom to hang up the damp, white towel draped over her arm. But the ice spreads quickly in the frosty air, and the biting remark sent her way is colder than the blustery day outside.

"For good, Dorota."

Fumbling steps and a faltering face because she has been more than just a maid for the young lady sitting before her. From childhood scrapes to melodramatic whining and from lovesick to heartbroken, she has been confidant, protector, party planner, friend, scheming partner, and second mother. And she can see past the icy, derisive eyes to see the pain and hurt and all-consuming darkness and the way her Miss Blair is grasping onto her high school crown in order to pretend like it doesn't exist.

But a dollop of yogurt has been dropped onto her head; a public humiliation meant to chase her out of the room. And her employer has turned in her chair and begun to brush out her own hair in a cool dismissal that leaves Dorota stunned as she slinks out of the door.

With a sigh and the swallow of the lump in her throat, her hair is brushed and dried and plaited into a perfect arrangement. Robe clutched tightly closed in her hand, she moves towards her closet with trepid steps; robe unfurling and parting in her open hand, she moves towards the clothes hanging at the front of her closet with trepid steps. Her fingers brush against the expensive dresses she purchased in a tearful, self-loathing shopping trip in order to accommodate her expanding frame. A shopping trip she would repeat with smiles and adoration if she could because she didn't know. She had no idea that—

She rips the dresses from their hangers and tosses them to the floor as the bubbles of pressure expand and spread across her chest leaving her drowning and gasping for air. And she tells herself not to cry; pushes aside all thoughts of what could have and should have and might have been as she pulls together a skirt and shirt and all the pieces she needs for a Blair Waldorf-approved outfit from the back of closet.

She forces herself to pull on the skirt over her tights because tights are not pants and she cannot spend the rest of the day – the rest of her life – in bed. Her mother and Cyrus made that clear when they put her on a plane from Prague to New York, when they sculpted out a plan for her life for the next few months and again when they sent Dorota up here this morning to rouse her from bed and force her to wash her hair.

And everything is prim and perfect with nary a hair or emotion out of place as she glides down the stairs to find Dorota seated in the living room clutching a glass of water and Cyrus patting her back in gentle reassurance. Her mother's arms are folded across her chest; hard and narrowed eyes darting towards her daughter at the sound of footsteps on the marble. Eleanor strides towards her daughter yet the young woman ignores her and continues walking towards the elevator without recognition.

A hand curling around her elbow and a tight squeeze sends eyes darting to connect with her mother's gaze. Her face morphs into that perfect mask of bitchy dismissal that clearly states she has little tolerance for or interest in the words coming out of her mother's mouth.

"You cannot fire a pregnant woman for being pregnant, Blair. It's illegal. And you certainly cannot fire Dorota. Do you know how hard it is to find good, reliable help these days?"

The chime of the elevator as the door slides open distracts neither of them, but the hostility between them mutes the golden glow of the other resident of this apartment. Serena's worried eyes look from mother and daughter in a debate of whether to engage or flee, but the question she seems to be constantly asking escapes past her lips making the decision for her.

"What's going on?"

"Laurel is expecting you at the atelier at four. Don't be late."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Mother."

Her smart reply is met with the unfurling of fingers around her elbow and the flash of confusion in the blonde's eyes as she slips into the waiting elevator alone. Her best friend's offer to accompany her is waved away with a sarcastic comment about how she's a big girl and then with a softer, quieter comment barely audible over the shutting doors about how Serena wouldn't understand.

* * *

Campus is a busy blur of people wearing sweatshirts with used textbooks under their arms milling about with those in designers heels clutching coffee cups as they lament grading curves and examinations. The perfect smokescreen for her to hide behind as she moves across campus from the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs to the Registrar's Office.

Her conversation with the Dean alternated between not so subtle reminders of the importance of a Bachelor's of Art degree over a MRS degree and not so subtle praising of the impeccability of her transcript from last year and the unfortunate year she spent at NYU. In the end, it was her transcript and open checkbook more than her winning personality and name recognition that convinced the Dean of her readiness to return to the rigorous of academic life. (For Cyrus and her mother, it had been her transcript and the memories of a now faded Columbia pennant she hung in her dorm room.) And, now, the paperwork ending her leave of absence and granting her enrollment privileges for the spring semester are signed, sealed, and ready to be delivered.

She clutches the paper copy of the course catalogue the Dean's secretary gave her to peruse while she waited for her appointment just a little bit tighter. The paperwork is tucked inside; the pages of the book folded to mark the classes she wants to take – _Transitions from Realism to Impressionism in Art, Managing Human Behavior in the Organization, Paris: Capital of the 19th Century_. Her interests and academic drive resurfacing after the long slumber of a girl who dreamed of princes and fairytales.

"Blair?"

The voice is a reminder of the inevitability that someone somewhere would recognize her. The familiarity is a reminder that her friends would eventually catch up to her. And they do that awkward dance whether neither of them is sure if they should hug, although the twitch of his hand at his side makes it obvious that he wants to.

"What are you doing here?"

The question is spoken at the same time yet she holds her ground and forces him to answer first. He reminds her of his internship in a tone that suggests she might have forgotten and explains how he was meeting with one of the journalism professors to discuss swapping real world experience for credit. She, in reply, drops the book in her arm so he can read the words stamped across the front and explains in a half-hearted, teasing tone that she can't let Nathaniel Archibald – bottom of their class – receive his diploma before her.

"The Dean says I won't be able to graduate until December two thousand and thirteen at the earliest, but—"

"She's obviously never met Blair Waldorf."

The smile she offers him is small but genuine – the first of its kind for a very long time – and his blue eyes dance as he breaks into his own smile. He has been living in darkness and tragedy; caught between the conflicting emotions of hating her for what she did to his best friend and loving her for who she is and all that she has been through. Fails to realize that the battle waging inside him has been internalized inside her and that she is trying desperately to squash the words rushing forth to constitute a question she cannot allow herself to ask.

"Are you going to see him?"

She did. Once. When the doorman and Cyrus were pushing back the paparazzi and her mother and Dorota were escorting her from the car to the apartment, she had turned her head and saw him lurking in the shadows watching her. The blinding flash of the paparazzi had diverted her attention for just a moment, and she had turned back only to see empty sidewalk where he once stood.

Then again, maybe she hadn't seen him. Maybe it was all the figment of an overactive imagination trying to construct an 'us' that no longer exists.

"Nate—"

Her voice fractures and breaks; surprisingly weak for how tall and poised she appears in designer heels and perfectly applied make-up. And the tide of battle shifts into her favor as the sound assaults his ears because she so very rarely steps out from behind the mask of frigid bitchiness, but when she does—

"I have to go. I have another appointment."

Her name is a murmured apology; his hand shooting out to stop her retreat. But her heels pound furiously against the sidewalk in a harsh rebuttal to his overtures as she retreats to her waiting town car. The paperwork reinstating her to Columbia and the course catalogue are shoved into her purse; she'll submit it later when Nate isn't standing slack-jawed in front of Kent Hall. And her emotions are smoothed from her face, squirreled behind fortified walls as the driver asks her where she would like to go.

The traitorous pains of hunger stab relentlessly and send her eyes flicking towards the clock on the dashboard of the vehicle. With nearly four hours before her next appointment, she is half-tempted to direct the driver to the little French bistro halfway between Columbia and home.

Yet her mind changes at the twisting within her stomach over the idea, and her brain silences her stomach so harshly that the stabbing pains become sullen whispers against the reminder of what she would have been doing today. Against the reminder of the two appointments written and circled in red in her planner as though she could have forgotten. The location of the later appointment comes tumbling out, and she snaps out the words again when the driver looks at her in the rearview mirror for confirmation.

The driver, of course, conveys no emotions as he pulls away from the curb because he isn't paid to comment on the location of where his employer wants to go. He leaves that role to the saleswomen who ferry her to the private dressing room at the back of the boutique with peculiar looks amongst themselves. Who faltered in their plastic smiles when she glares hotly as the glass of champagne offered to her; who watch with avid interest as the designer herself arrives to converse with the woman whose appointment the receptionist had all but officially cancelled following the consulate's announcement.

"Miss Waldorf would like to see her wedding dress."

The saleswomen murmur their acquiescence at the words of the designer, and the one they had all envied at the time the appointment was originally booked scurries off to retrieve the specially-designed gown from storage. No one envies her now; no one would wish to be the dress consultant to a jilted fiancée.

Nancy is quiet and methodical as she hangs the dress and arranges the train. For any other client, she would exclaim over the selection as she points out the delicate beading and intricate ruching of the fabric. But, for this client, she makes no protestations when the brunette icily dismisses her from the room and shuts the door with quiet relief behind her.

The dress is beautiful. The product of many conversations and a flurry of revised sketches following her escape from the horrid gown she was nearly forced to wear. Vera had been one of the first people she told, and even now as her eyes narrow and burn into the middle of the gown, she cannot detect the modifications – the cleverly designed panels meant to smooth and conceal – that now have no purpose in her life.

She stands and brushes off imaginary dirt from her skirt before walking on shaky legs to stand before the dress. Her fingers brush against the fabric of the dress and then pull away quickly as though she is afraid her touch might soil the pristine fabric. Or, more likely, soil the happiness this dress once represented.

Her fairytale with its tiny complication that would be easily disguised behind panels of fabric because, although she's always strived to be a leader rather than a follower, she would not have been the first woman to walk down the aisle wearing a Vera Wang original customized to accommodate her preg—

Her stomach lurches at the incomplete thought; her brain chanting for her to expel the bad. But the little girl who dreams and the young woman who yearns and the darkness that taunts from inside her has her peeling off her blouse and shimming out of her skirt.

Her fingers slide the dress off its hanger until it puddles on the floor. She steps inside it, pulls the gown up her body, and holds it tightly to her chest as her fingers search for the row of tiny buttons to close it because if she can just go back, if she can just pretend for just a little bit longer-

Eyes careful trained to avoid the mirror stare back at her with sullen, stark honesty. The paralyzing zing of pain sending panic coursing through her so quickly that her eyes fail to close in time to stop the tears, which roll down her cheeks and fall to stain the pristine fabric of the cleverly designed yet entirely unnecessary panels. The door to the dressing room opens, and her eyes flicker in the mirror to find Vera standing in the doorway with a tight expression left somewhere between a smile and a frown.

"You are an artist and the dress is beautiful, but you designed it for me before the accident and now I—"

And then Vera's nodding like she understands and offering to hold the dress until such time that the beautiful gown is needed. A comment that makes it obvious how little she does, in fact, understand. Because the gap between where her body ends and the dress begins over her midsection is wide and engulfing.

An empty, dark chasm without a bridge and a light to guide her across.

Her emotions are still roaring – a churning of her stomach and a pounding in her ears – when golden sunshine and blonde perfection whirls into her life with anxious eyes and statuesque legs that cut the distance between them in no time. And the rational part of her wants to know how the blonde found her because she didn't call or text and Gossip Girl has laid dormant since that night, but the irrational part of her that cheers in relief surfaces and consumes her at the sight of her best friend.

"B, are you okay?"

Her body begins to constrict and collapse and suffocate on the pain until she is left gasping and clawing and desperate for air. She pulls at the dress and searches frantically for the miniscule buttons because everything feels tight and the realization is bearing down on her and, no, she is not okay.

"Help me get the dress off. Help me, Serena!"

The dress is peeled and pulled from her body until it crumples into a pile on the floor, and only Serena's hands curling about her arms keep her from following suit. And she clings to the warmth and the sunshine that is in such stark contrast to the cold and darkness surrounding her. Clings to the woman who had been halfway through lunch when she remembered today was to be the final fitting for her best friend's bridal gown.

Serena's hand runs up and down her naked back, skimming over the skin pulled taut across bone in gentle reassurance that she is here now because Blair is her sister and even when she flees without a goodbye, Serena will never truly let go.

"Let's get out of here, okay?"

"Okay."

* * *

_Breakfast at Tiffany's_ and buttery croissants: a Sunday morning tradition moved to a stormy Tuesday night where they – best friends, roommates, and sisters – lay side by side and watch Audrey as Holly move about her kitchen with a flurry of words. Hands held tightly under the covers; a gentle squeeze meant to spur her into talking. And she knows what Serena thinks, knows that the blonde thinks she is mourning the loss of her fairytale wedding. Right now, though, she doesn't have the strength to explain how the dress represents everything she lost or the desire for self-flagellation coursing through her.

She volunteers to retrieve more croissants from the kitchen when the plate between them is left with nothing but crumbs. Her stomach tightens and rolls and rejects as she pads down the stairs through the dark apartment towards the kitchen.

The house is silent save for the familiar sounds of her favorite movie playing upstairs. She imagines her mother is still at the atelier steaming and stewing over her daughter's failure to show for her appointment but too busy discussing hem lengths and heel heights to come home. A phone damaged beyond repair thankfully creating a buffer between them in its absence. Cyrus left for a dinner engagement with old friends, and Dorota left not long after she did this morning. Sent home to calm down and spend the afternoon with Ana and Vanya with the assurance that her job will still be here for her tomorrow.

A thread of guilt worms its way through her yet is squashed by the feeling of that firm and healthy kick that still reverberates against her palm. The feeling of longing that has her setting the plate down on the table in the middle of the foyer and detouring to the half-bath near the elevator. The feeling of desperation that has her turning on the faucet and falling to her knees in front of gleaming white porcelain. The feeling of emptiness that has her sliding her finger down her throat until the stuffed expanse of her stomach is just as void and heaving just as violently as the rest of her body.

All the evidence is washed away and wiped clean with a handful of tissues and a swig of mouthwash set out for guests to use during dinner parties. For a brief moment, everything in her life is calmed and controlled. But the elevator chimes and she prepares herself from the onslaught of a trademark Eleanor meltdown; rounds the corner expecting to see her mother's face mid-yell only to falter at the sight before her.

Because bandages are gone and physical wounds heal, but she looks right into his eyes and sees that things have not changed. He can still undo her in a single glance, and the pain lurking beneath and hidden in darkness is magnified as the echo of her heart pounds in her ears and slips past her lips in a soft whimper of five letters.

"Chuck."


	4. Part Four

Driving rain – the kind that drills through clothing and leaves him chilled to the bone – beats against the sidewalk in a relentless pounding until the concrete under his feet becomes a river that floods over its banks and water starts to pour into his shoes. Monkey – usually so eager to ferret out squirrels even at this hour of night – clings to his side. Fur slicked back by the rain shows off the outline of his body as he ambles slowly next to his owner.

The dog knows the path by heart, knows the way they cut across the park to walk past the duck pond and then double back to walk down Fifth Avenue. Monkey's eyes dart half-heartedly to see if any ducks are available for a chase; his owner's eyes dart half-heartedly to the bench beside the pond and then to the tall windows at the top of the building located at Eleven-Thirty-Six to see just a glimpse of her.

Tonight, however, the sidewalks and streets are desolate and devoid of the tourists who normally crowd the sidewalks and the runners who normally dart around with them with displeased looks. A compounding of the solitude and silence that he hasn't needed or wanted in a long time and yet has had thrust upon him through the actions and decisions of others. Short attention spans sending the people in his life off to support the arts in Brooklyn, to sleuth out more information, or to shine a light on someone else's darkness.

(The later done, of course, at his fervent urgings and reminders that someone else would slide into his sister's vacated position and whisper mellifluous nothings in her best friend's ear until she, too, thinks the honorable and courageous thing to do would be to change who she is and run away from her problems.)

Movements in the shadowy darkness along the path catch his eye, and his hand tightens instinctively about the leather leash. A visceral reaction to the last time men stepped out of the shadows and stole the final remnant of his dream for an 'us' that includes him and her with ruthless abandon. Tonight, however, he has nothing more to give; his dreams already shattered and stolen from him.

Yet the man that steps out of the shadows greets him warmly, calls him by name, and entrants him to use first names rather than the more formal greeting he utilized in reply. The man – shorter in stature but greater in happiness and age – holds his umbrella up at a comical height in order to offer the younger man refuge from the storm while his eyes with their merry twinkle fade ever so slightly as the darkness reaches out and touches him, too.

"Thank you for the phone call, Chuck. Eleanor and I – we never would have thought to look in Prague."

Nor had he. Private investigators combed through Paris and Italy for any sign of her until late one night when he mindlessly spun the globe in his living room and played yet another game of 'Where's Waldorf?'. His fingers trailing absentmindedly from the capital of Hungary northward only to freeze on the capital of the Czech Republic at the memory of hate to love but love to hate sex where her fingers had pressed against the faint pink scar on his lower abdomen and words of hatred for a city she has never seen were pressed against his ear.

It had been a hunch that she would chose to flee to the city of his near death and lost hope in the face of her own; a gamble that paid off yet cost him still. Because she still remains locked in her ivory tower out of his reach. Because her words and her choking sobs haunt him well into the night; sounds and emotions magnified in the lonely darkness. A heart-wrenching reminder of all that he lost; an emotional gulf he struggles to cross given the separation between them.

He would have gone after her, would have traveled miles to close the physical distance between them in order to soothe and close the emotional one. But MRIs, healing wounds, and the interference of a mother who is not to be trifled with kept the Bass Jet grounded and sent him turning to Eleanor and Cyrus for assistance in bringing her home. Her best friend might be comfortable leaving her to lick her wounds, but he learned years ago that it is better to lick them for her before she finds someone else – someone despicable and quick to take advantage, someone who slinks in like a snake and offers up forbidden fruit – to do it.

And maybe if he could just see her, if he could just get past the doormen who turn down his money out of fear more than loyalty and deny him entrance day after day, then he could find all her wounds – even the ones buried deep inside invisible to all but his eye – and clean them and heal them and show her that the only way to survive the darkness is to fight it together.

"Why don't you come upstairs and dry off? You can wait there until your car can come get you."

Cyrus' offer is a strong temptation that whispers to his deepest desires and sends him nodding slowly in agreement. The doorman watches him but does not stop him, and the sound of his heart pounding echoes loudly in the small, enclosed space – ricocheting off the wood paneling – as the elevator carries him from the ground floor to the penthouse. His thoughts race; that kind of nervous, confused energy he hates for he is suave control and perfectly knotted ties.

And, the truth is, that he has no idea how to react when the doors slide open and Cyrus leaves him standing in the foyer while the older man retrieves towels for him to dry off with. No idea if he should run up the stairs or wait for her to miraculously appear; no idea if he should throttle her or coddle her.

The decision is made for him at the sound of soft footsteps on the marble and the flash of brown hair and purple velvet around the corner. What little air pumping through his lungs is lost; the sight of her leaving him breathless for the umpteenth time

Yet this is the wrong kind of breathless; the kind that leaves him with wide eyes and a gasp on his lips because her vulnerability and the way her glow of happiness has been so unceremoniously stolen from her will always be his undoing. His heart lurches and pounds with the fervent desire to sweep in and be the white knight to her fairytale. The recesses of his brain – fueled by anger over her abandonment – whisper dark, cruel reminders in his ear that white never was and never will be his color. That he is black with a splash of purple; the kind of knight confined to the shadows whose color comes from the castoffs of her lightness and glow.

But the fractured syllable that is his name off her lips silences his brain, and his heart finds the rhythm her presence brings him. An erratic, seizing beat that drives him crazy yet somehow remains the only sane thing in his life as they nearly fall into each other. Ramrod backs held in stiff postures collapsing under the weight of their realities as they meet toe to toe, forehead to forehead. Her nose brushes against his cheek; his breath brushes against her lips.

An erratic, seizing beat that drums him out of the darkness and into the light as her delicate and dainty fingers – ones he has kissed and held and had wrapped around his heart since he was sixteen – skim along his temple to run through hair cropped short against his scalp and trace the scar still healing. And skin that crawled and ached for her touch is suddenly soothed at the mere whisper of her fingers against his skin.

Her eyes are soft and open; deep, brown pools that serve as windows to her soul. The pain and vulnerability suddenly a stunningly bright light that blinds him, that closes his eyes to the quiver of her chin as her fingers follow the pink line – subdued with time but still an angry line – and her breathing fractures as she searches for the concave of his skull underneath that is imaginary to all but very real to her. His hands move from his side to touch her elbows and then fall to curl about her hips and run his thumbs soothingly against her skin pulled taunt over her hip bones through the soft velvet, against scars and aches that lurk beneath. Her fingernail – torn, jagged, and unpainted – nicks against his healing skin; his hiss of pain ghosting off his lips and hurling into her face.

And those deep, brown pools trap him like quicksand because he is left blindsided when she throws herself backwards out of his tender grasp.

Her eyes flare dramatically as her spine becomes rigid and locked; her hot exhale of protest a splash of fresh mint and harsh realities to his face. A feeling of dread blooms within him because he has seen the waves crashing in tumultuous darkness and felt the pull asunder reflected in her eyes, but this curtain of cold, withering ice falling over her eyes is different. The denial of her and him and their 'us' taking on a form he has never seen before.

And he is caught up in the desire to pull her towards him once more, searching frantically for how to proceed and what to say when the accusation of manipulation is flung at him and stings like the bite of a million angry hornets.

"How can you blame me? You don't have a phone. You won't respond to my emails. Your doorman denies me entrance every time I try to see you. I just wanted to be there for you after the baby."

He wants more than that. Longs to go back in time to the moment she called him and answer her question with the resounding affirmative his heart screamed and his brain silenced before town cars were ever introduced into their lives. To return to the back of that car and, for once in life, insist on wearing a seatbelt because he already lost his father this way and now he is slowly, painfully losing the only thing that matters again as a result of his selfish, reckless abandon. Wants to hold her in his arms and known that the imperfect way he loves her is enough to keep her and him and their 'us' from sinking.

"Well, as you can see, I'm surviving without you. And I intend to continue that way so you should go."

The desire to correct her tears through him because they are both surviving – shaky breathing and healing stitches – but he doesn't want to survive any longer. He has survived without her for far too long; carved out a new life where he is capable of apologies and tells himself can get by on business deals and the sight of her glowing with happiness on another man's arm.

But now? Now, however, it is not enough. She may be intent upon continuing this way, but the idea of living without every part of her is no longer a proxy for a fulfilling life. An unpalatable offering, a bitter pill he cannot force himself to swallow because her glow of happiness has been vanquished and the darkness introduced has all but consumed the lightness of her being.

"What happened, Blair? What changed after the accident?"

"Did it ever occur to you that there is no such thing as an accident?"

Her words claw at wounds still bleeding beneath his skin and press against the bruises on his heart. A shiver of woeful regret and blame runs down his spine and causes his whole body to seize. His admiration for her ability to hurt people becoming frozen under the icy calculation of her words.

"Well, it certainly felt like one when the car hit the wall."

Just for a moment her fortitude falters; his words sneaking in like a Trojan horse as her eyes flutter shut and her tongue darts out to wet her lips. But the words that spill forth – words about the universe pointing out what is really important – push them both back into the darkness and leave him fumbling blindly in an environment where scotch and whores cannot sedate the pain.

"How can you say we weren't important when we're the only thing that matters?"

She steps away from him again; a slap far louder than the shake of her head at his words. His hands flail uselessly as she darts past him and back up the stairs towards her bedroom. He swore that after everything that happened between them he would be honest, but the swear that crosses his lips tonight is directed at himself for his insistence upon being too honest and for how he is too angry and for how their love sends one of them running scared in the opposite direction.

Footsteps and nails on the marble distract his attention from the slamming door upstairs that silences Serena mid-question. The accomplice to his admittance to the penthouse holds out a blue towel with eyes that attempt to soothe and impart understanding in a silent offering meant to counterbalance the way his hand is curling around the banister and his right foot is hovering over the bottom step of the staircase.

The dog at Cyrus' side peers up at his owner from under a towel; the fabric obscuring his face so the dog has to shake off the towel to see. His owner bends down to collect the towel and crouches down on bended knees to wipe the rain from Monkey's feet.

"She just needs time."

The simple, soft reminder screams in his ears because time is the one luxury he cannot buy. Weeks without consciousness cost him weeks without her by his side. Weeks were every second was a torturous reminder of all that he lost because the darkness makes everything feel like an eternity.

The car accident feels like a lifetime ago yet the feeling of her fingers in his hair, of the soothing of the ache in his heart lasted for the briefest of moments. A nanosecond when he stepped into the light and felt at peace and, more importantly, at home until the encroaching black ice crushed the fire burning between them and illuminating them in the darkness.

"When your father died—it wasn't the right time. You weren't ready to hear it, and you just needed time. She just needs time."

There are words – ones that will soothe his ache in his heart more than fingers in his hair ever will – that he once heard and needs to hear again. The thread of guilt is becoming a blanket of pervasive darkness that threatens to smoother him; the feeling of dread is blooming from a garden to a forest to a jungle that obscures his vision and castes him even further into the darkness. The only thing he can see is the way she reacted to his touch, the panic and terror in her eyes as his thumbs traced what used to be soothing circles on her skin.

And the words he needs to say become logged in his throat as he meets Cyrus' gaze. He searches the older man's eyes for the clarity and light he cannot find anywhere else, but all Cyrus has to offer him is a repeat of words already spoken.

"She just needs time."

His legs shake as he stands; his skin crawls at the suggestion that he walk away because the prospect of living without her—

He should not. He does not want to. He cannot. For he has been lost in the darkness for so long and the road to finding their way back to one another has been so rough that he isn't sure what fork to take or how to even find the well-worn path in the waning light.

But Cyrus is there when everything else is not enough and ready to remind him that she caught him in his darkest moments and offered him a soft hand to hold him and a soft place to land even after he fled the warmth of her embrace for the cool detachment of Thailand. And the reminder of how it is far more important to be the person who catches her when she falls than to be the one who pushes her over the edge sends his hand sliding into the pocket of his pants and his fingers fumbling for the secret that has kept him afloat during the chase.

Metallic trim flashes with the streak of lightening that tears through the sky and illuminates his features as he surrenders the last of the light in his life. The older man accepts the phone hesitantly; fingers gently curling around the device as he promises to facilitate its safe return to its owner.

"Can you—Tell her my message is still the same."

It takes all the strength he does not have – strength previously spent walking away, trying to reform himself, learning of the baby, and waking and healing without her – to surrender his position within the ivory tower. His composure is a perfectly knotted tie; the cracks in his facade as evident as the stench of her breath beneath the mint mouthwash.

Hidden to all. Visible to one.

But that one is out of his reach and his fumbling in the darkness has only added in her retreat. Haggard breaths escape with the ding of the elevator door shutting behind him; the wood-paneled compartment becoming a cloister for her words so they echo over and over again in his ears.

_There is no such thing as an accident._

A question. A statement. An indictment.

And the jungle of dread and the blanket of blame work in tandem to snag his limbs and trip him as he stumbles towards Arthur and the waiting limo. The barked order to purchase a bottle of scotch is met with a raised eyebrow and the slightest hesitation in the form of a glance at the dog perched on the backseat. But prohibition never stood a chance as the law of the limo, and the bottle of alcohol is clutched in his hand as the elevator door to his penthouse opens.

Uncapped and poured, the amber colored liquid burns as it runs down his throat. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and the body weaker because the sting he hasn't experienced in years is there as his vice of choice burns away the rejection and the pain and the ever present reminders that the path is a spiral he has only begun to climb where there are no do overs and he must cling precariously to the edge.


	5. Part Five

Eyes shut tightly and falling lashes brush dark circles that speak to sleepless nights as the image before her is swept off into the darkness. Her reflection – pale and sullen – disappears behind the curtain of falling eyelids as another show – one she sees each time she closes her eyes – begins to play. The slow trickle of dark red blood down his forehead stains her vision as the scene flares from the burning of embers of hope around dark coals into a bright, uncontrollable flame that ravishes and burns and destroys everything in its path.

The desire to collapse, to fall further into his embrace had blown through stoplights and stop signs and all the warnings until she gave in only to be immediately halted by the way he flinched under her touch. His visceral reaction to her touch speaking loudly and harshly and staining her heart long after he left and she scrubbed away the the small drop of the blood left on her jagged nail. The memory of how his face contorted in pain and the anger burning behind his eyes becoming the focal point of the picture playing out in her mind. And now the red-stained trail i guides her movements into the everlasting darkness dragging her down onto her knees.

The protests of her empty stomach are meek and mild compared to the need for control worming its way through the darkness and touching every part of her. Her throat burns with every gag and every jab of her finger down her esophagus. Her atonement mixing with her sins as the water sweeps away the evidence.

And it takes her more than a moment to find the strength to pull herself up off the floor and rise onto shaky legs, to grip the marble counter and look at herself in the mirror again. The dark circles under her eyes and the pale luster of her lips will be corrected with strategically applied make-up until all anyone can see is the delicate porcelain skin pulled tighter over bone – the closest she'll ever get to perfection – in a mirage of lightness that hides the darkness beneath. A red velvet curtain marking the beginning of her role as the lead actress in the movie of her life where everything is perfect for this version of herself is assured a happy ending. Where tickets sell themselves because everyone wants to believe what they see at the surface rather than fight through dark and harsh exteriors.

A sold out show night after night save for one.

A ticket in the form of a black electronic device slipped into her palm by her stepfather as she hovered outside the kitchen and debated with herself. A gentle reminder that some messages can never be deleted dropped into a statement about how the lox leftover from brunch are quite good, especially with extra cream cheese and capers.

Her body had purged more than the lox she forced herself to eat as she listened to the message. A torrent of tears clouding her vision as she typed out a reply that was anything but simple because two words, eight letters apply to more than just the return of her phone. And even now the message plays over and over in her head. The steady sureness of his tone becoming a berating reminder against everything she is doing; a spark of light against the darkness inside her.

The loud drumming of water against the tile of the shower wall was chosen late last week to replace the faucet as her accomplice after she exited her bedroom and caught Dorota's suspicious eye in the swipe of her cleaning rag against the mirror. Shaky legs wobble as she wrenches off the shower and opens the door to her bedroom because the threat of being caught still sends a thrill up and down her spine. Yet the mask returns – legs no longer shaking as knees lock – when she spies her best friend perched on the edge of her bed typing away frantically on her laptop.

This new obsession in detailing her life has become a spotlight whose intensity the blonde can control. A reconstruction of her reality; a movie where only the good is highlight and blinds Serena to the bad playing out under her nose. The brunette has come to count on the temptation of being the next Gossip Girl – but better and less vicious as Serena is quick to assure her – as another accomplice in her actions because the thrill causes Serena to miss juicy tips sent into her inbox. The lie about failing to wash out all conditioner in her hair rolling off the brunette's tongue with barely a blip of acknowledgement.

"I was thinking we could spend the day together. Go shopping or eat lunch on the MET steps."

"I have class."

The deadpanned answer is punctuated with a smile of false apology, and her cool dismissal is accepted without protest from behind a computer screen. A hand squeezes her shoulder and words of proud encouragement are whispered against her barely damp hair in farewell because returning to Columbia is a step and Serena is only willing to push so far. The blonde is confident, they will eventually have that conversation because while the brunette had fallen into her embrace with gasping sobs and been unable to explain as her tears smothered her words, Serena is still the only one allowed past the threshold of her inner sanctum

Today – just as they did yesterday and the day before that and the day before that – they go their separate ways: the blonde off to find the next update for her blog and the brunette off to class at Columbia. Yet the buzz of her phone changes her plans as the short, sharp message of her mother's assistant summons her to the atelier pronto.

* * *

Her arrival is barely noticed; a blip on the radar amidst the flurry of activity. And her mother is a commanding presence in the middle of it all as she sends men and women cowering under her bark and her bite. Her daughter clings to the perimeter of the scene as she watches for a moment. A pang of jealousy coursing through her because for all the reasons she doesn't want to be her mother, this is the one area where she wishes she could. People may fear her mother but they love and adore her all the same because Waldorf Designs is a crown that did not come from a man or from a scheme but rather from years of hard work and self-determination.

"There you are."

The exasperation in Laurel's voice serves to remind her that while she may be a Waldorf, here she is just the intern. The one must be tasked with only the simplest of errands because, no, she does not know her way around a Singer sewing machine and, no, she does not know how to sew on a button so it lines up perfectly with the buttonhole.

(That incident had been enough to propel her into quitting, but Eleanor had taken one look at her daughter with her piercing gaze and dismissed her outright with the reminder that Waldorf women never quit.)

"Priscilla is helping in alterations with Eleanor's last minute edits. I need you to the go to the location of the photo shoot and check on the natural light."

"The light?"

The disbelief in her voice is evident for the job sounds fake and even more of a handout than what she has already been assigned in the past. A new task for which Priscilla is far too perfect and valuable to be asked to perform leaving her as the only option for Laurel given the current state of things at Waldorf Designs.

"Yes. Eleanor is worried the place Marlow selected is too dark and rusty and Brooklyn to showcase her designs."

"You want me to go to Brooklyn?"

Her response is met the raising of a meticulous eyebrow in incredulity that an intern would dare challenge her orders. Her protests about how she has her business personnel management class in three hours are met with the snarky reminder that the first rule of business is never upset the boss. Especially considering that Eleanor specifically asked for Blair to perform this task, and Laurel is quick to ponder aloud about how she supposes that Priscilla can be sent instead if Blair is unwilling to go.

Determination to climb to the top (or, at least gain some footing against perfect Priscilla) is fueled by the information that her mother specifically asked for her eye. The drive to be the best of the best returning and sustaining her even when her mother calls out her name and shoos away her staff hovering about so mother and daughter can have a moment alone before she leaves.

"The model fittings are such a mess that I'm going to have to stay here and work all night. Can you meet the representative from Bendel's for dinner tonight?"

The question is asked from behind a dress form, and for a moment she thinks she misunderstands because Eleanor Waldorf never gives up an opportunity to court a business deal. But Eleanor glances up at her daughter over the rim of her eyeglasses with raised brows because, obviously, she can send Laurel but she thought sending a Waldorf would be more representative of the brand.

"No, don't! I mean, of course, I can be there."

"Good. You need to come back here at seven to change into one of the dresses from the new line. Priscilla is fitting one to your old dress form. Those are still your measurements, are they not?"

Her mother's eyes narrow as they rake over her form, and the darkness whispers in her ear about her size and her shape. Yet she fights against the cruel words because even if the measurements are wrong, she will browbeat Priscilla into making it work as this dinner is far more important than the task she was assigned at seventeen of deciding who sits where during her mother's fashion show. Already reciting her introductions and practicing her poised charm for tonight's dinner before the door to the atelier slams shut behind her.

* * *

The loft is filled with natural light thanks to floor to ceiling windows preserved from the days when this was a factory humming with machinery. The photographer's assistant – an overworked, underpaid intern dispatched to appease Eleanor Waldorf and forced to appease her daughter instead – punctuates the silence with the reminder of test shots completed last week where the light had streamed through the windows and accentuated the beauty of the model.

"You mean the clothes."

"Excuse me?"

"The clothes are being accentuated. The model can be replaced. It's the clothes that cannot change."

The color green bursts into her life pushing aside the red-tinted darkness as her brain fixates on the memory of how replaceable models can be. How the clothes are unyielding and everything – hip spans, cup sizes, waist measurements, whole bodies – must bend and break and adapt to match their level of perfection.

"There is also rooftop we can use if Mrs. Waldorf to still concerned about the natural light."

"No, no rooftops."

A nod of approval as her eyes sweep over the room punctuated with a bark of dismissal at the option offered to her, and the photographer's assistant is left second guessing himself as she turns to leave. She types out a message to Laurel; the clock atop of the screen of her BlackBerry reminding her that she now has forty-five minutes to make it back to Columbia in time for her class.

A reminder that sends her rushing to call her car service and that distracts her from those passing by until a hand reaches out and touches her elbow. She spins, shies, darts, and clutches her purse closer to her body because this is Brooklyn, a borough filled with yuppies and artists and thieves who steal everything from hard won crowns to designer clothing to men.

"Humphrey."

The eight letters are an exhale of air in relief because Dan Humphrey has a history of giving up catfish for caviar and wouldn't know the first thing about the cost and quality of her handbag. Yet her relief is short-lived because he takes a step closer towards her, because his eyes search hers from something he has no right to see and never will be able to find for she keeps those parts locked away and out of reach to all about a handful of people who share in her sins and love her regardless. Who know how to destroy her just as easily as she can destroy them.

"You haven't been returning my calls."

"I haven't been returning anyone's calls."

The annoyance in her voice cannot be helped because her actions are not meant to be taken as a special designation of where he sits on the MET steps. The confusion on his face a reaction to the change in her demeanor because he once was the only person she confided in and now she is shying away from his hand as it reaches out to hold hers. And he thought he was finally started to see the good, to rid her of all the darkness and help her change, but the façade of the queen that terrorized his sister and his classmates is returning in a gust of bone-chilling wind.

"Nothing has to change, Blair. I'm still your friend. I'm still here for you."

The words cause her body to recoil in disgust and send her eyes dancing in fury because everything has changed. Because in the blink of an eye she had it all, had the 'us' she always wanted and then some only to lose it just as quickly.

"Of course, things have to change. Everything has changed. I lost it all."

"No, you didn't. I meant what I said when you came to me. You still have me."

The words had once been a comfort, been a source of strength because the most judgmental person she knows was willing to stand beside her through the revelation that, once again, two men had rumpled her sheets in one week and now she didn't know the parentage of her child. She needed the space and the opportunity to flee to a place where people didn't know her name to grapple with the fact she continued to hold in abstract over fear of what it might do to her fairytale, of how it might cost her Louis or Chuck or the approval of her friends and family. And, in the end, her decision had cost her far more than what she had calculated.

"It's not enough."

Her voice breaks; the sadness seeping in like light through the opening in the curtain because there's only one thing, one person that could ever come close to being enough and they both know it. The setup of that ill-fated meeting that night hadn't been of her doing but of his. A concession that only one thing, one person could ever move her past her paralyzing fear and help her make a decision about the right thing to do. Because for all he is all his words and all his urging over how she must face her own reality with a taped together piece of paper, he still wasn't the person she turned to in her confusion and doubt and inner turmoil over what is right and what will make her happy.

"You left him. You gave him up."

The accusation is hissed in her face yet the words barely make her flinch, barely even sting as much as the ones that had been flung at her through an antiquated telephone line across a million miles of saltwater and physical separation.

"I'll lose everything before I lose Chuck all over again."

The words are raw and honest. A forthright and simple confession that leaves the man who fashions himself as a writer at a loss for words because simplicity is easily complicated with the knowledge of everything she lost in the process of choosing Chuck. And Dan is sputtering out words and rewriting the present to fit his narrative, to become a warning about a love others write odes to, and it is all becoming more than she can stomach.

"I'm not Clair Carlyle. You can't rewrite me and decide I'm lightness masquerading as darkness. I could pretend to be her; I could hide out in Brooklyn. But I would have to try to fit into someone else's fiction again and Brooklyn is a poor substitute for Monaco. At least there the diamonds are real."

Her harsh gaze holds his; her title as the crazy bitch restored to her for the first time since everything went pear-shaped, since she was last held in an embrace that didn't feel like a cage. A glimpse of the woman lost amidst the darkness peeking out of the shadows. A cast of light reflected in the tinted windows of the limo parked across street that fails to catch her eye as she walks away from Dan.

* * *

The seam of her mother's prototype chaffs against her skin. A hasty fix for how off her measurements compared to the old dress form; a frantic correction meant to keep the skirt on her hips rather than sliding down slender thighs. A tuck and a hem and bunch of fabric that press up against the bloat of her stomach as it protests and fights every bite she forces herself to swallow because Mister Alyeska ordered two appetizers in addition to their entrees and won't take her demure decline as an acceptable answer. And the last thing she wants to do to top off her day is jeopardize her mother's deal with Bendel's because she wouldn't eat another piece of bruschetta.

So her discomfort is pushed behind that thick, velvet curtain as she twists her body ever so slight, as she sits up just a little bit straighter to abate the bitter refusal of a stomach in revolt. The darkness tries to pull her into the well-worn groove of the record that plays over and over again in her brain chastising her for how fat and ugly and gross she is, and her stomach joins her brain in a chant for her to purge and rid and hate herself. But the control of a woman who refuses to relinquish her crown sweeps in; the Queen B who cleans up messes and banishes traitors getting her through another bite of her meal.

The conversation is, thankfully, easy enough. Mister Alyseka's disappointment over being wined and dined by Eleanor Waldorf's daughter forgotten in the discussion of Paris, art, history, architecture, and all the things of beauty to echo the pulse of the fashion industry. Her charm and her wits distracting him so much that Mister Alyseka picks up the check and leaves her with a comment about how happy the executives at Henri Bendel will be to hear about the direction of Waldorf Designs is headed in and, no, he is not just talking about the clothes.

She accompanies him to the door only to double back to the bathroom without his notice when the revolt of her stomach becomes too forceful and she falls back into that grooved part of her brain. The opulent bathroom at the back of the restaurant is single occupancy; a fact she is grateful for as she locks the door behind her. Here there is no need for running water; no need to even go near the mirror hanging above the faucet. And it is far easier for her to keep pretending when she can avoid seeing the reflection of her own realities in the mirror.

She gathers her dress up to her knees careful not the crease or fold the fabric in such a way that might give her away as she sinks down to the floor, as she kneels in front of the porcelain throne she has taken to worshipping multiple times a day. Her need for control and absolution spinning out of her grasp and becoming something that controls her; hurling her towards the point of no return she reached once before in the past where the temptation becomes an addiction. A need she is driven to sedate with skilled fingers that rise to her mouth and prepare to slip past her lips painted red without hesitation.

"And you would do this to me?"

The magnetic attraction calls out to her despite the harshness of his tone curling like tendrils around her ear as it whispers for her to give into her desires, to turn around and collapse into his embrace. The current of electricity passing between them without even the touch of his skin against hers and causing her heart to lurch into her throat as it begins to beat once more.

And this time she doesn't need to ask what he is talking about. There are better questions about why he is here and how he managed to follow her into a bathroom she distinctly remembers locking on the tip of her tongue, but she swallows back the words because his footsteps are echoing in her ears as he moves from the doorway to stand behind her. Because she can feel the heat rolling off his body, surrounding her heart, and setting her whole world alight.

"You would really insult me like this?"

"That's not how it is. I wasn't—"

"Going to shove your fingers down your throat? That is exactly what you were going to do, and I'm telling you no."

"You have no right to tell me what to do."

"Don't I? Well, I guess I should head upstairs. I hear the view from the roof of this building is to die for."

The threat is neither veiled nor sardonic, and her eyes close as a reflexive shiver runs down her spine and another kind of darkness reaches out and touches her. Fear mingling with guilt and pain and twisting her into so many knots that her heart hammers in her head and her stomach rolls with a need to purge all the memories associated with another moment where she almost lost him.

"That's the rule, isn't it? I don't stand on the ledges of rooftops and you don't stick your finger down your throat because whatever you do to yourself, you do to me."

"This is different. I'm not—"

He moves closer, squatting down to sit beside her so his face is so close to hers that the familiar smell of scotch and mint and natural musk brushes against her cheek. Her eyes dart sideways to connect with his, to widen and narrow and fill with tears over the way he is looking at her because the pain she feels is echoed in his eyes. No flames of fury but rather deep oceans of desperation whose waves lap at her heels and threaten to drown them both.

"Killing yourself? You are, Blair. Piece by piece. Pound by pound. And you may be able to hide behind mouthwash and running water from everyone else, but I'm Chuc—"

His signature statement hangs in the air like the scarf around his neck – familiar and yet meant to make him identifiable based on superficial details. The words swallowed and lost in the darkness because they are no longer enough. No longer the words he can default back to because they can see right into each other's core and superficiality is no longer a mask they can hide behind.

"You may not have meant what you said to me in the car, but I love every part of you, Blair. Every part you think is ugly and broken, I find beautiful and desirable. Every part you try to kill is one more part I lose and I have already lost you enough. I can't bear to lose any more so, please, don't do this me."

And one of the hands that carried her through so much in their past outstretches towards her as his voice fractures and breaks with the repetition of his plea. The fingers still hovering in front of her mouth drop slowly with the shaky exhale of air and the rolling of a tear down her cheek to slide into his grasp. His large fingers instinctively curl around hers, pulling her away from her chosen confessional and into his embrace. Her head burying into his shoulder; her voice muffled against his scarf.

"I—I'm sorry."


	6. Part Six

Silky, smooth skin slides against the palm of his hand and his grip immediately, instinctively tightens. Wary, watchful eyes shift to the hand in her lap, to the fingers that used to provide so much pleasure and now betray them both. The longing to hold them increases to become a siren's call he must answer as her fingers twitch against the fabric of her dress and tug at the bodice draped over her stomach. The thumb of his right hand runs up and down the length of the thumb of her left hand – a compromise to his need and desire to remind her of his presence.

Not that he could ever forget hers. Forget the way her shoulder brushes against his when the limo rounds the corner; her hair falling like a curtain between them only to part and skim and dance against the fabrics covering their shoulders. Forget the way her breath hitches when his leg brushes against hers and catches again when he moves it way; her tiny gasp of delight becoming a gasp of displeasure over how he likes to tease her so. Forget the way her hand feels hot and cold, soft and rough, and a million other contradictions when he holds it in his own; her pulse strumming like a jazz band leading him on the melancholy, exuberant journey home.

His fingers grasp a little bit tighter – not enough to hurt, not enough to cross from pleasure to pain – onto hers as the limo slows, as he can hear the tale tell ding of an open door through the partition as Arthur exits the vehicle to open the back door for his employer. And he turns to look at her knowing they have only a minute or two, knowing that outside their cocoon she could very well slip from his grasp and metamorphosis into a butterfly he can only admire from afar and never catch.

But her fingers squeeze against his and her lips brush against his cheek. A dainty, brief touch prolonged and punctuated by the pressing of her forehead against his cheekbone and the free hand that snakes up to press against his jawline.

"No rooftops."

Even now she makes demands, extracts promises he is not sure he can wholly give. He wants to make his own demands yet his leverage is precarious – a rockslide ready to give should she choose to cast him out and push him closer to the edge once more – and past attempts to extract such promises from her ended with a thorough tongue lashing from her cunning wit. And even now he must hold his cards close to his chest, must snag her arm as she turns to leave, and must hold her gaze sharply and strongly until she nods her head and relents to him as her escort.

She doesn't hold his hand. Instead, she walks alongside him with her arms folded across her chest; her hair falling like a brown curtain between them. Mumbled words about photoshoots he cannot catch covering up her gasp as the elevator lurches and their shoulders bump and brush against one another.

"Nine o'clock?"

His question interrupts the chime of the elevator as it climbs from the bottom floor to the top, and he has to turn to see her head held stiff and high bend ever so slightly in acquisition to his demand. Her name a gravelly mess off his lips in warning that spurs her to finally verbally relent.

"Doctor Sherman. Nine o'clock. Tomorrow morning."

Fingers stretch inside the pocket of his pants to palm his new BlackBerry. The same one he shoved into her hand back in that bathroom with the demand that she call the number he had programmed in almost three weeks ago to the date.

Fingers slide against the keys of his phone to remind himself to call and persuade Doctor Sherman's receptionist to confirm her arrival. The limo that trailed her from Eleanor's atelier to Columbia to Brooklyn must park for now; the veil lifted from her eyes so that now she knows to watch for him, to notice limos and scarves and bowties that don't belong outside Doctor Sherman's discrete offices.

The doors of the elevator slide open and he steps aside to allow her to exist first, to allow her to step into the foyer and spy the two blondes seated in the living room rising to greet her. Sunshine and confusion and mutual perfection replaced by sorrow and understanding and mutual concern. The exact kind of ambush he explicitly said he did not want that sends her turning on her heels and blasting him with an icy combination of anger and distrust.

"You told them?"

Words about how she called, how she promised to go are hissed into his face. Rebuttals he has heard before that fail to sting because they more like bees or hornets robbed of their stingers. An obnoxious nuisance swatted away only to return time and time again.

"B."

His sister steps in with a wavering voice and tears clouding in her eyes. Words she heard over and over again each time the brunette tracked her down to a nondescript bar and cleaned her up are forming on the blonde's lips in order to be repeated back to her best friend. Promises that everything she does is something they do too spilling forth as his best friend steps forward with hands jammed in the pocket of his jeans in solidarity.

"It was just—I didn't mean for it to happen."

"I know, B."

The blonde buys into her words as she folds the petite brunette into her arms and places a kiss against her hair but he knows better for he has seen this all before when he caught her jamming her fingers down her throat when they were both fifteen. When he looked into her eyes and saw the lies tucked inside and spread clues to their discovery all over the Upper East Side.

Just bright enough that Serena and Harold could no longer ignore the uneaten yogurt cups in her hand as she sat on the MET steps or the way she seemed to be obsessive about washing her hands. Just dim enough that Nate wouldn't know and her perfect fairytale ending with her as Mrs. Nathaniel Archibald wouldn't be compromised.

"Thirty-three five six two—"

"Chuck."

His demand for her to stop lying careens this intervention off the rails and leaves the blondes struggling to continue to believe what they want to believe because he knows her better than he knows himself and there is no denying that. His name is spoken in a huff, in a rebuttal that his threat is not particularly helpful, and he watches as her grip on Serena tightens, as she grasps onto this narrative that she likes better than his because a minor slip in control is easier to sweep under the rug than a series of them. Excuses about being tired, about needing a shower are accepted by the pair of blondes and the one left out of the loop on this dirty, little secret is dispatched to guide her up the stairs and never let her out of his sight.

"She's been doing this for weeks."

His sister accepts his words with a silent nod, and a perfectly manicured finger rises to wick away her gathering tears. Reminders that she dealt with this before, that she knows the drill – hyper-vigilance, escorts to Doctor Sherman's, doors left ajar – fall on deaf ears because he is not willing to step aside this time. Because he has lived in the shadows for far too long and the warmth of the light is too hard to pass up. Because he worries that the light will diminish before he can even come close to quenching his thirst for it.

And he is halfway into this argument when the name of his opponent – because that's what she is right now – is called out from upstairs. A sort of anxious cry that makes him wonder and worry and not even hesitate to dismiss his sister because his only goal today is to keep her safe, to protect all the parts he loves so much from meeting the destructive parts he accepts and somehow manages to love in spite of what they are capable of doing.

His foot hovers over the bottom step, his hand clinches the banister, and a whoosh of air leaves his lips as he hears footsteps on the marble. As he prays to a god he does not believe in that the person rounding the corner will not be her stepfather cautioning him against his chosen action once again because giving her time is no longer enough.

Eyes slant sideways and what little air he has left in his lungs rushes out and chases after the breathe that has already escaped over the sight of the person stepping out of the shadows of the hallway. A little wobbly and very top heavy – due date fast encroaching, he guesses – with concern etched into her features, a thread of anger laced into her emotions, and hands wringing over the expanse of her belly in panic.

"Mister Chuck?"

The confirmation of her half-spoken question is done with the nod of his head, with the way he steps forward to try and catch her as her tears pool and her knees buckle. And the maid begins murmuring in Polish – a broken, mournful soliloquy he does not understand – as he guides her to a chair in the living room and assists her as she sinks down. His offer to get her water – sparkling or still? – waved away as she steps into the role no amount of money can pay her to take on and grasps his hand tightly in her plea.

"Miss Blair hurts – hurts very badly – and she punishes herself more. She must see it's not her fault, Mister Chuck. That we all love Miss Blair and only want her to be happy."

His promise to try is met with a rebuttal – half-Polish, half-English – that trying allows room for failure and that there can be no failure where Miss Blair is concerned. The darkness creeping in to remind him of past failures chased away by Dorota's sure and absolute faith that he loves Miss Blair and Miss Blair loves him, by the way the maid directs him to the back staircase just in case he's forgotten the way.

He takes them two at a time – nearly stumbles over the last step in his miscalculation of the number of steps – and slows when he finds Nate hovering just outside her closed door. His best friend takes one look at him and slows the pounding of his heart with the information that Serena is inside helping her change, that he thought it best for all their friendships if he stepped outside while the love of his best friend's life stripped.

"She was doing this while she and I were dating, wasn't she? That's what the comment about sticking her finger down your throat at Bart's funeral was referencing, wasn't it?"

The sad nod of his head, the slight twinge in his heart over how he broke his promise to never tell Nate their secret once again is met with the shake of Nate's head and the blonde's short exhale of disbelief because how could he not know? And Nate is muttering about how, of course, his best friend knew more about his then-girlfriend because Blair never let him see any part that wasn't perfect, because the Captain never let him move her from the box containing the wishes and edicts of his parents and she wouldn't fit otherwise.

"And now with the accident and the baby—"

The mention of the giant elephant in the room is like a sucker punch to the gut, like being slammed against the trunk of his limo with Nate's hand fisted around his collar once more. That exact kind of panic that someone has mentioned it laced with just a shiver of relief that someone has finally mentioned it.

He hasn't heard those two words, seven letters since the last time he spoke them downstairs in the foyer of the Waldorf penthouse. He hasn't heard someone else says those two words, seven letters since Serena broke the news to him all those weeks ago in the hospital where he awoke without her.

"It was going to be ours. I was going to raise the baby with her and lov—"

His voice fractures on the verb he once could not say, once could only confess to his best friend and his sister. Nate's hand clasps against his shoulder in an attempt to remind him that he knows his best friend lost more than just blood that night. The secret he has been harboring since this morning pushed aside in favor of comforting his friend.

"Serena knows what she's doing. She has a plan, and I'm sure this Doctor Sherman guy will—"

"Therapy was Harold's idea, and Doctor Sherman was Eleanor's ."

Another mention of those not included in this conversation, of those who love her in their imperfect way and often times to try solve and fix rather than love and support. And Nate looks at him before asking point blank if he plans on calling them all the while cautioning against it with the tone of his voice.

"What else am I supposed to do?"

"It's always been us – the four of us, the Non-Judging Breakfast Club – against the Captain, Eleanor, Lily, Bart. We've always found a way to help one another without involving our parents."

His protests that this is the opposite of Serena's drunken exploits are cut off mid-sentence by the opening of the door to their right, by the appearance of their current topic of conversation standing in the doorway and the sight of their main topic of conversation curled up in her bed. Small and fragile amidst silk, pale bed coverings with damp brunette hair cascading down the pillow under her head; small and fragile amidst the darkness only a few are able to see through.

Words about how she is sleeping are rejected with the roll of his eyes because she is very much so awake. Because the rhythm of her chest expanding with even, sleepy breathes is not the beat drumming before him. But his sister is saying nearly all the words he wants to hear – there are some she'll never be able to say, after all – in low murmurs and reminding him that in his haste to play the white knight, he abandoned their mother – a title spoken with a twisted, teasing grimace – at a restaurant alone. Left her mid-laugh and mid-sip of her cocktail, which in turn left her worried and panicked as she left message after message on her daughter's phone wondering if Serena has seen him.

Another stab of guilt joining with the one already coiled around his heart that makes him wonder if the reason why the brunette reacted so badly to his touch if because some part of her remembers the way his body crushed hers. The way his hands stopped carrying and started dropping and destroying everything precious and perfect in his life. Another stab of guilt that carries him through the conversation with Serena and Nate were they agree to take shifts throughout the day: Serena promising to cover morning and Nate promising to cover the afternoon and both shifting uneasily in a debate over how to untwine friendship from crazy love and cover the evenings.

Another stab of guilt compounding his darkness as he watches Serena slip into bed beside her and allows Nate to lead him downstairs only to find her headband broken and crushed on the floor of his limo. Three pieces he gingerly picks up and cradles in his hand. Three pieces left jagged and chipped that he doesn't know how to glue back together.

* * *

Poised perfection sends him rising to his feet off the couch and dropping the phone with the text from Serena onto the coffee table before he skirts past the dog running eagerly towards the elevator and approaches her with just enough slowness that she can encircle him in her embrace. Affection he is still unaccustomed to despite the years; an etching of motherly worry he shall never truly become accustomed to. Fingers grasping around his biceps as motherly worry becomes motherly scolding with questions about how and why and emotional well-being that he is still unaccustomed to answering.

And his answer is a construction of five letters that are deceptive in their simplicity because they constitute a complex web of connections that encircle his heart and construct half of who he is. The small smiles and happy laughter, the dark thoughts and even worse actions, and all the love in between that helps guide him out of the darkness and into the light of the man he could be.

Her arm loops through his right arm and guides him towards the direction from which she came with words about how if her mother was here, CeCe would be saying they need a drink. Her questions halted as they travel from the penthouse to the bar in the lobby, as he helps her with her chair and gestures for the bartender to take the lady's order.

"And a scotch for my son, please."

His eyebrow rises in surprise not because he hasn't already been imbibing of his chosen drink, but because Lily has been so insistent from the day of his discharge that he not partake. Prescription pain medication and alcohol creating a deadly combination she does not want to see. And even though he was weaned off all the drugs weeks ago, he is still surprised that she would be so willing to enable him.

But she takes a single sip of her colorless drink with a gesture for him to follow suit, places her drink on the provided napkin, and waits for him to have his fill before pressing forward with her questioning. Asking him in so many words what it is about her daughter's best friend that leaves him so twisted and always coming back for more.

The silence holds only for a moment; the rules of the Non-Judging Breakfast Club repeated to him late last night by his best friend replaying in his head as he tries to find the right combination to express what happened without involving parents.

"She keeps walking away from me and not like she has done in the past. It's different. I feel like she's changing. Like I can only catch glimmers of what I used to see so clearly."

Another swig of the scotch runs down his throat but there is no comforting, familiar burn. His throat and stomach dulled by all he has partaken since their ill-fated dinner the night before; his body immune to any other feelings than the ones already coursing through him.

"I know I didn't die in the car accident, but sometimes it feels like I did."

If he would just look up, he would see the twist of displeasure on Lily's face and the anguish she felt over Nate's call that night echoed in her eyes. Instead, he stares at her hand clutching the edge of the bar. The one that slides across the bar to grasp his own, to squeeze with a combination of motherly affection and admonishment for him not say such things.

"Don't say that. You survived and it was a miracle. And I don't know why she keeps walking away, but the way she acted with you after the accident, Charles – Serena, Nate, and I could barely get her to leave your side."

His head snaps at that new piece of information because he woke up without her and assumed she fled to places previously unknown just as soon as she was physically able to. Because his assumption was left unconfirmed by the shuttering of Gossip Girl and left uncorrected by his friends or Lily or Humphrey.

"She stayed?"

"The doctors didn't tell you? The nurses were so perturbed by her vigilance over you that one of them – Anna or Angela or something starting with an 'A' – decided to give her the task of being in charge of your sponge baths. The doctors said you needed only one every couple of days, but no one had the heart to tell her that. She was like your own Florence Nightingale."

His lips twitch at Lily's last two words, at the memory of them playing Florence Nightingale with a much naughtier spin one autumn evening. And then the confusion returns because if that's the case, then why did his nightingale flee from him and why did Eleanor and Cyrus find her in a nondescript hotel in Prague?

"Oh, it's all such a blur now. I went to get coffee while she completed your bath and when I returned, um, your heart had stopped. The doctors had rushed you into surgery and one minute she was there and then— Serena said she had just spoken to Louis when they returned to the doctors trying to revive you. I guess that seeing him and then seeing you rushed off to surgery was too much. That's when they found the, uh—"

She cuts herself off gesturing to his head and swallowing back her words. The doctors' words about the swelling of his brain diagnosed upon arrival and the internal bleeding only discovered later filling in the gaps in the information she is providing.

"And, of course, with all the complications they needed a family member for a blood transfusion and I gave the doctors Jack's number."

"Jack?"

The name spoken with an echo of disbelief because he cannot believe that Jack would be as selfless as to step forward and save him, to answer Lily's call without a demand for some kind of compensation. And as far as he can tell there was none because although he awoke with the most important thing in his life, he is still in possession of the Empire and of the majority stake in Bass Industries.

"Yes, it was very surprising, but I suppose we should all thank Saint Jack."

Eyebrows furrowed in confusion once more as he repeats the name he never thought he would or should or could attribute to his survival. But Lily's only reply is to lift her glass to her lips and shrug her shoulders as she takes another drink. Jack's treachery is well known to her, and none were more surprised than she when the much needed blood arrived several days after his last surgery, after prolonged worry not even Botox could smooth was etched into her face.

The empty glass clatters onto the bar, and the bartender moves down the length of the bar at the sound to sweep away her empty glass and inquire after whether or not she would care for a refill. She, of course, declines tucking her purse into the crook of her arm and rising off the stool with a perfunctory kiss goodbye and a hesitant look towards the near empty glass of scotch in front of him.

She longs to stay, longs to mother a son that only lets her in so far. Yet he needs time to stew and ponder and contemplate this new information she has given him. The information she purposely divulged and the information that was accidentally passed along. And so she leaves him sitting in the Empire bar alone nursing a scotch at an hour his father would have frowned upon.

The bartender refilling his glass and the alerts of the phone left upstairs going unnoticed as he contemplates this revelation in silence, as the parts of him clamoring for the light duel with those parts that reveal in the darkness. One side wondering about sponge baths and tender care he cannot recall; the other side pondering over blood transfusions and a leopard that has changed its spots. A victor declared as the head of his security slides up to him at the bar and reaches through his hazy, muddled contemplation with the announcement that an electronic access card flagged for immediate notification has just been used to gain entry to his penthouse.

He takes them two at a time – nearly stumbles over the last step in his miscalculation of how the alcohol has affected him – and slams his own access card angrily against the elevator call button. Uncharacteristically jittery as he waits for the doors to open, as he rides the elevator to the penthouse, as he steps out and finds not even Monkey waiting to greet him. A determined stride past the open door to Nate's room – empty save for the plaid shirt abandoned on the floor – and through the kitchen to the living room with its empty couch and even empty bar.

Eyes shifting from the empty bar to the underutilized pool table to the blocks of hazy glass serving as the wall between his bedroom and the living room. A slight shift in the shadows causing his eyes to narrow and his stride to lengthen until his hands curl around the doorknobs to the closed double doors of his bedroom and he flings them both open with a whoosh of air and the frantic pounding of his heart. A black and white dream from long ago suddenly playing out in live Technicolor.

Yet there is no crumpled dress on the floor, no jolt of realization that awakens him from this nightmare. Only the sight of brunette curls cascading down her back and a dog whose head is tucked out of sight in her lap.

The echo of his heart spoken in five letters causes the curls to sweep against her shoulders, the curtain of hair to sweep open as she turns to look at him. Misty eyes clouded with tears and tracks of their fallen predecessors staining her cheeks sending him careening to his knees in front of her.

"My card still works."

Whispered words meant to be an explanation and all he can do is wish that he could make her understand that it will always work, that he may own the Empire but she owns the key to everything that he is. And his hand reaches up to curl around the hand holding out the card, to press it into her palm and make her understand even as words fail him. Her gaze darting from their enclosed hands to look at his face; her gaze causing the worry and dread to bubble up inside him once more.

"Why did everything get so messed up?"

He shifts from blended knee to sit beside her and offer her all the support he can give. To offer her his shoulder to cry on as she twists her head and presses a tear stained cheek against his chest. To hold her tightly as her hand reaches up to grip the arm wrapped around her shoulders. To offer her a soft place to fall into the darkness and a hand to help carry her into the light.

They careen onto the bed – bodies entangled with her back to his front as Monkey the first comforter scurries out of the way – and his hand moves to grip her shoulder, to pull her onto her back because the slightest twitch of her shoulder clues him into the silent tears she is trying to muffle. A rolling motion with a pause for him to hover over her with worried, sorrowful eyes and then another as he rolls onto his back and she hovers over him with hands that moved towards his head to trace a surgical scar no one can see.

He reaches up, snags her hands mid-touch, and drags them to rest against the left side of his chest. To press her hands against the place that actually hurts and that only she can heal and that beats erratically yet soothingly with her return. One hand breaks free to sweep the hair back from her eyes – the job of a headband falling onto his shoulders – and trail under her eye and down her cheek to catch the falling tears. And this time she does not flinch or shy away from his touch. Rather, she fixes eyes that reflect the mournful desperation found in his own on him and speaks the three words, ten letters no one has heard her say.

"My baby died."


	7. Part Seven

**Author's Note:** Thank you all for your support with this story. I know it hasn't been an easy journey so far and do so appreciate your reviews and messages. Although there is an important movement forward in this chapter, the timeline of this story takes a small step back because I felt it was necessary to explain Blair's thoughts and motivations in the previous chapter.

* * *

The hazy, soft glow of the morning sun – pink, yellow, and orange – meets her piercing, harsh glare – pink, red, and bloodshot from yet another sleepless night. Another night spent tossing and turning because of the memory of his cold fingers slipping into her hot ones and the vision of him slipping out of her grasp and her slipping out of his. An Audrey dream interrupted that sends her hands searching in the darkness and her body heaving forward as she is jolted awake. Her best friend rising up to pull her back down to the soft mattress, to offer her a hand to grasp onto as the hands of the clock beside her bed count the seconds until her next reckoning and the hours since his departure in precise precision.

The clock on the dash of the taxi is different; the green, digital numbers changing sporadically every time she turns her head. Adding two, adding five as her gaze becomes fixated on the pedestrians moving briskly on the sidewalk. Junior executives headed to lower Manhattan mingling with immigrants headed uptown to clean and care for the homes of those ensconced in the town cars and limos stuck in traffic around her. Tourists waiting on the corner for the light to change while New Yorkers stream in and out of the standstill traffic without a second thought.

The hum of the city paused by the sight of a brown-haired man in a suit – poorly tailored, she notices with a crinkle of her nose – strolling down the sidewalk with his hand clasped around that of a little girl wearing a blue pleated skirt and last season's Tory Burch flats. Her dirty blonde curls bouncing with every step, with every twist of the observer's stomach as she mentally tailors the suit, substitutes in this season's flats, and casts in roles that are no longer on her call sheet.

The lurching of the car around the corner allows her to cover up the grimace on her face and instead turn her gaze towards Serena and focus on the familiarity of this plan. A taxi instead of a town car that drops them off around the corner, a pair of dark sunglasses obscuring her features, and a best friend who shrugs over being noticed yet promises to take the fall if anyone sees them.

"S—"

Hesitation seeps into her voice when the car slows to a stop halfway down the street, and her best friend looks at her with two parts sympathy and one part ready to drag her kicking and screaming if necessary. A solemn promise to her brother reinforced by the fact that her designation as best friend means Serena must stop the movies and the fantasies and steer her best friend from the fiction section to the non-fiction.

"You're my sister, B. I'll stand up on a stage and allow the Ivies to think I'm a recovering drug addict again if it means you get the help you need to stop this."

The hand that squeezes hers in promise also pulls her from the cab and directs her towards the nondescript building on one of the cross streets. Their shoulders bumping as blonde perfection flitters down the sidewalk and brunette imperfection stumbles on shaky knees because her eyes are too busy scanning the horizon. A cautious look darting from down the curb of the street to the rooftops as the door to the building is held open for her.

Little has changed in the intermittent years since she was here last. The receptionist quickly buzzing her into Doctor Sherman's office because people like her don't pay such absorbent fees to have their anonymity compromised with a picture of them in the waiting room of Manhattan's most exclusive eating disorder clinic plastered on Gossip Girl or, now more likely, Page Six. Serena's hand squeezing hers with the unspoken promise to meet her at the coffee shop on the corner in an hour in keeping with this charade before the door clicks shut behind her.

Probing questions masked as pleasantries are launched almost as soon as she sits down. An interrogation meant to zero in on the source of her weaknesses becoming relentless in its assault as questions about her food journal – Doctor Sherman's eyebrows rising at her reply that she no longer keeps one – are interlaced with those about the semantics of her purging and thinly veiled criticisms of her mother.

"The last time you were here we discussed how—"

"How I crave control because my mother leaves at a moment's notice and my father sent our lives into a tailspin because he came out of the closet. How I fixate on perfection because I think my mother and my boyfriend prefer my best friend to me because she's prettier and skinnier and her laughter is like sunshine on a warm, summer day in the Hamptons."

Her voice is laced with bitterness and cruelty because she hates the insinuation that she can be so easily psychoanalyzed. Because that boyfriend is a childhood romance looked back upon fondly but firmly behind her, her father seems happy at his chateau with Roman and Cat, and her mother, oddly enough, has some kind of confidence in her daughter that even Priscilla the perfect intern has yet to earn. Confidence that will, of course, disappear when she fails to show at the photoshoot in Brooklyn within the next five minutes.

"We also discussed how you use food to punish yourself."

She sours at Doctor Sherman's prompting because his eyes flick to her bare ring finger. Another insinuation that he can see right into her core; another person without all the facts seizing on the idea that fits their construct of her.

"That was a mutual decision."

"Was it?"

The insinuation hangs heavily in the air; the clouds moving in to block sunlight streaming through the windows of Doctor Sherman's office. To correct him would mean divulging into her choices, opening herself up to a person she neither choose nor wants in her life, and confessing her darkest thoughts and terrible actions when she can't even confess them to those in her life that love her.

"I chose another man."

The words are spoken with gritted teeth and the clinch of her stomach. A confession that is neither simple to explain nor simple to say, and her body protests over every syllable and every emotion being divulged. Her head pounding as Doctor Sherman tailors his questions to fit this new piece of information; her lower abdomen coiling and tightening painfully as Doctor Sherman presses her for more information.

She used to need his aggression. She's not the kind of person who trusts easily or can be coddled into changing with soft tones and even softer suggestions. Respects the power struggle far more than the giving nature of a so-called nice girl.

But today his aggression irks her. She needs the ruse of being in control in order to get through another minute without the 'us' she had for only a short period of time. A lifetime wiped away in the blink of an eye; a lasting impression seared onto her brain.

And even though the hour is not up, she gathers her handbag and prepares to leave because she is done. Because she cannot concentration on his questions given the ache of her body and the way her heart seizes and sputters at his questions about where the man she chose over her fiancé is today.

She takes three steps towards the door when Doctor Sherman's protests that she stays suddenly become a croaked whispering of her name. She turns back to him only to follow his gaze to the chair she just abandoned.

Her heart falls to the pit of her stomach and then rises again with the bile forcing its way up her esophagus over the sight of an irregular-shaped red circle in the middle of the cream-colored cushion. Her fingers – hot with the flush of panic and nerves – swiping against the damp spot on her skirt just below her ass.

"I—I—"

"There's a bathroom down the hall to your right. You can clean up there."

Directions spoken in a distracted tone because Doctor Sherman is too busy buzzing for his secretary to call the maintenance department. A grim look tossed at her departing form not in sympathy or understanding but because Doctor Sherman became a psychiatrist in order to avoid dealing with blood.

Control slips through her fingers like fine silk. Grasp it too tightly and it tears; grasp it too loosely and it falls out reach. Her purse is tossed on the counter by the sink as she contemplates her options – stay or flee, purge or swallow, cry or fume. Her fingers releasing their grip on the counter as she turns towards the bathroom stall; her fingers covering her mouth and then falling to slide against her stomach as she catches sight of herself in the mirror.

Red-rimmed and bloodshot eyes searching and finding and exploiting every flaw and bad decision in a chant for control and perfection and punishment that grows louder with every second and every exhale of air. Her fingers clench and tighten around the fabric of her skirt; the fingers of her other hand fumbling with the zipper in the back. Her elbow bumps against her purse; the contents pouring out and crashing to the floor when it falls over the edge.

Mascara and lipstick roll across the floor in opposite directions, credit cards from her wallet slide under the sink, and her BlackBerry skitters along the tile until it slams into her foot. The now cracked and darkened screen becoming another broken part of her life, another fractured form of communication that sequesters her alone amongst the darkness.

Fingers pulling at fabric still and the resolve holding her upright buckles until she sinks down to the floor. Until her knees hit the hard title – coolness seeping through her tights - and her fingers brush and grasp and curl tightly around the phone. The hazy, dimmed glow of the broken screen – blue, black, and white pixilation – meet her softened, desperate gaze – pink, red, and bloodshot from stress and unshed tears. Harsh messages from Eleanor and even harsher messages from Laurel locked behind an unreadable screen and forgotten in the realization that the simplest message of them all – but one that took two years and two million tears – is lost to her forever.

Her stomach heaves violently, and she only has time to turn her head before the yogurt and fruit foisted upon her this morning are expelled. The contents splattering back on her already stained tights and skirt; the hot heat of shame flushing her face as she turns her head away. Her hands move to wick away tears and gather up her belongings. The mascara and lipstick forgotten in the pressing desire to flee; the stains and telltale smell ignored in the haste of her exit.

"You sick? I ain't gonna drive you if you gonna make a mess in the back of my cab!"

The taxi driver catches her eye in the rear view mirror as he waits for her to direct him where to go – uptown, midtown, downtown, and, no, he does not go to Brooklyn. But she's too busy fumbling with the contents of her wallet – her credit cards out of their meticulous order – to do anything but glower at the man and tell him to go anywhere – uptown, midtown, downtown, and why would anyone want to go Brooklyn?

"You got money? I ain't no cheap, tacky sightseeing tour bus."

Visa, MasterCard, American Express. Fingers pausing to trace the edge of the only card that managed to stay in its slot, eyes sliding to look at the broken and silenced phone in her lap, and mouth opening to direct the driver to the only place she can go.

* * *

The doorman at the Empire greets her by name in a quizzical tone as he holds up the door; the manager surveying the guests mulling about the lobby tries to stop and direct her since no one called down and told them to expect her. But the card clutched in her hand silences their speculation and the green light that flickers when she swipes it against the reader silences her own. Doors opening without someone calling up and getting permission beforehand; doors opening without him expecting or anticipating her arrival.

There are no heavy footsteps on the floors or greetings spoken behind a newspaper as he lounges on the couch. Just the scrapping of nails as his dog runs out to greet the visitor to his home; his excitement dampening ever so slightly when the arrival turns out not to be his owner. But his tail still wags when she greets him by name and when he followers her on a walk through the apartment.

The mid-morning sun – harsh and bright – streaming through the windows causes her to back away from the empty bar and even emptier room. Her steps leading her into the darkest room in the entire penthouse – a room once filled with light and now cloaked in melancholy darkness.

The soft blanket once draped over the foot of the bed gone; the pictures once placed on his dresser hidden out of view. The hard lines of his bachelor pad no longer abutted by trinkets of affection. A shell of a life that would appear pristine and perfect if she wasn't trained in the art of finding cracks.

Cracks that cause her to trip and falter; limbs jerking and twisting so painfully that tears gather in her eyes as she falls. The color red darkening in her eyes, flushing on her cheeks, and spreading across the back of her skirt with every sob over what this room has become, over how outward appearances of power and control fail to hold in the darkness of his inner sanctuary.

Hesitant steps cause the bed to dip behind her and eventually become a belly crawl as his dog slinks up beside her. Head sliding from its place on the bed between his paws to rest on her leg, and deep, surprisingly soulful eyes roll up to meet hers. Fingers run through his soft fur as he nudges her leg; fingers curl around the electronic key card in her hand as her tears fall. Wet splotches staining and darkening her skirt and his fur.

Heavy steps cause her fingers to still and tangle in Monkey's fur. The beckoning call of her name causing her to hold her breath, swallow her tears, and sweep her eyes towards the door. The misty hazy of tearful eyes clouding her view of him, and fingers clutching Monkey's fur release their grip to catch the falling tears and hold them tightly in a hand pressed to her chest. He falls on blended knee before her with eyes that see right through her becoming dark pools filled with a million questions.

"My card still works."

A ragged, jagged sob breaking through her whisper and cutting them both because he flinches at the sound of her voice and she flinches at the way her stomach cramps. But his hand reaches out to curl around hers, and her skin crawling in panic finally stills and settles under the soothing yet pressing and gentle yet forceful squeeze of her hand. Their eyes reconnecting; her words stringing them back together in a reminder of what they had and what they were going to be.

"Why did everything get so messed up?"

A tear-stained cheek is pressed against his chest. The card tumbling out of her hand as she grasps onto his arm, grasps onto the new life raft tossed out to her. Their bodies becoming a tangled mess amidst the rocky shore of her despair, and she thinks for just the briefest of moments that she will never see the shore when he falls to lie beside her. Her tears and grief turned away from his view because he moves to align his body – back to front – beside her just as his sister did the night before.

But the moment passes quicker than the turning of the hands on the clock beside his bed because he rolls her right back into his embrace – front to front, eyes leveled. A pause for him to stare down at her and ask permission just as he did on their first, exhilarating ride; a pause for her to hover over him and allow her eyes – clouded and red – to search for and find and exploit every bad decision etched onto his face in a chant for control and punishment.

Shaky hands moving to touch and caress and atone for the sins faded from view and covered by brown hair; shakier hands moving to capture and carry and press her hands to the left side of his chest. Her fingers digging into the layers of fabric blocking her ability to feel the rhythmic beating of his heart; his fingers sweeping back the hair blocking his ability to see the broken pieces of her heart.

Silence wraps its arms around them both as she presses her cheek into his palm, as she feels the beating of his pulse where is wrist is pressed against her jawline. And she raises eyes heavy with tears and mournful desperation to see her emotions reflected in his and see those emotions deepen at the words slipping past her lips.

"My baby died."

The fingers gathering her tears freeze against her skin; their iciness rapidly cooling her heated skin and plunging her into a different kind of panic. She hasn't talked about what she once had since that day in the hospital when her ex-fiancé took ownership and left her all the blame. She hasn't talked about what he once wanted to share and wanted to give to her since before that night where she had resigned herself to unhappiness and he reminded her it didn't have to be that way.

"I destroyed you and my ba—"

Her tongue struggles to form the final syllable, and the word becomes lodged in her throat. Lost in the way his thumb strokes against her cheekbone and his head moves side to side in a rejection of her words against the mattress. His reply is a series of half-form thoughts; uncharacteristic slips in the way he always controls and contemplates over every word. And she cannot figure out what he's trying to say because all she can hear is the quiver of apology in his voice and all she can feel is the assurance in his touch.

"How can you still love me?"

The electricity between them crackles at her choice of one word, four letters. A jolt to her heart at the realization that maybe she made a mistake and maybe she only imagined this feeling in her all-consuming darkness of her desperation, but the hand holding hers to his chest presses them down so forcefully – ruby red ring digging into his palm – that she would swear she can feel the slow, steady beating of his heart through the fabric of his suit coat and dress shirt.

"I can't stop, and I don't want to learn how."

Her eyes hold his and her gaze becomes lost in his as she searches for the man no one else gets to see. Her lips open just wide enough to allow a gasp to escape, and his hands release hers just long enough to allow her to slide them around his neck. Her body gliding against his – nerve endings prickling with electricity – until she fits perfectly in the crook of his arm and her face is buried against his neck.

The familiar smell of him – scotch and natural musk – and the familiar weight of his arm around her body – fingers tangling in her hair – surround her and settle g her. She hitches her leg over his desperate to join them even further; he rolls his body into hers desperate to keep them joined forever. Minutes passing where they allow the world to spin on madly without them as they lay entangled together in their own cocoon.

A flinch of pain interrupts their moment when her hair brushes against his cheek as she winces. A tear rolling down her cheek and falling onto his crinkled shirt as he slides his fingers under her chin, tips her head, and forces her to look at him. A demand for an explanation and words of comfort already forming on his lips as she turns away from him, as she whispers two words, ten letters and starts to move out of his embrace.

"I'm bleeding."

She watches panic flare on his face and his eyes dart to the hands he grabbed and squeezed and pressed so forcefully to check for any sign that he inflicted the damage. His concern mounting over the way she pulls the duvet with her. The color red returns to her cheeks in a way that makes her cringe because she's been doing this since she was a teenager and she should have expected it, but it means something different now. It means that—

"I thought if I just—I didn't get them when I was fifteen and—"

Wide eyes softening as he pushes himself up and moves to sit beside her. The illuminations of understanding in his eyes causing her to turn away her gaze because that reasoning is only part of her thought process. Because she thought that if she could control this reminder of all that she lost then she would be able to face how she lost the rest of the 'us' that includes her, him, and her baby. Because she thought she deserved this punishment – her own version of a gunshot wound to the abdomen – for all the damage she inflicted.

But the desire to have some kind of control only ended up controlling her and only ended up causing more damage given the look on his face when he found her in the bathroom ready to atone for her sins in a way he does not approve. And, in the end, it didn't even work.

Yet his fingers are loosening her grip on the cover of the duvet and slipping in to interlace with hers and drag her from the bed. The promise to help her clean up leading her to expect him to escort her into the bathroom so that her features can only morph into a look of confusion as he leads her to the back of his closet.

Out of season attire is pushed aside and a single, black garment bag is pulled from the dark recesses of his closet into her line of sight. The zipper of the bag pulled down in painstaking reverence before the bag is pushed off the cluster of hangers and the colorful, distinct garments of a woman are exposed to the light. Dresses, skirts, and blouses not from last season but from over two years ago; dresses, skirts, and blouses that constituted some of her favorite pieces but were left behind in wake of what this place became.

And she doesn't know what to say or even how to respond as he silently pulls the last thing she wore here – a pair of well-loved pajamas – and holds it out to her in a silent offering. The five letters echoed in the beating of her heart become a fractured mess as he leads her from his closet through his bedroom to his bathroom and as he rifles through the bottom drawer of cabinet in his bathroom. The sleek, black case in his hand is placed on the counter; the contents shown to be all the items purchased years ago in an enticement for her to spend the night. Her brush and comb; her shampoo and conditioner.

"I thought you'd come back."

A simple confession that is anything but because it robs her lungs of air and causes her heart to fall once more. A hand moving to stop him as his hands slide around her hips and his fingers pull at the zipper of her skirt. A thrill of panic running up and down her spine as she contemplates either letting him see her at her most vulnerable or pushing him aside and facing it all alone. A relenting nod coming only after the words she spoke to him when he was firmly entrenched in the darkness are repeated back to her.

"The worst thing you've ever done; the darkest thought you've ever had. You don't have to hide from me, Blair."

And all the harsh and dirty things in her life are passed into the hands that carry her as he slowly, gently peels her clothes from her body. Her eyes rolling up to ceiling when her tights and panties are pulled down her legs; her eyes closing when he unwraps a pastel package, presses its contents into the white panties she used to wear during a different kind of play, and then helps her shimmy them and the pajama pants back up her legs.

All the undesirable realities she cannot stomach or face right now are gathered into the hands that carry her and shoved into the bottom of the trashcan. Her eyes opening when he tells her that he cleaned her up as best he could; her eyes rolling down to meet his when he wraps her in his embrace and words of apology are whispered against her temple.

"I tried so hard to keep you both safe. I wish it had been me instead—"

"No!"

Her roar of displeasure catches him off-guard. His startled jerk barely registering with her because she did not barter and plead for his life, she did not make such an agonizing decision to walk away when he hurt so badly, and she did not think of him before her baby as she lay twisted and broken in the back of that car for him to be so quick and so willing to throw it all away.

And her answer of how it was miracle he survived is met with the shake of his head and the correction that it was not some deity that saved him but rather the work of a man he wrote off as selfish poison. His Uncle Jack who answered the call of his doctors and adoptive mother and, surprisingly, sent the blood needed to help him heal.

"But I went to Australia and he said—"

"You went to Australia? That's where you were when I—"

She watches as his jaw slackens in surprise. His eyes frantically search hers for an understanding she doesn't quite know how to impart upon him because if he thinks that she would just walk away without a second glance, without the agony that ate away at her with every mile between here and Australia—

"I already lost my baby. I wasn't going to lose you, too. The doctors said you needed a blood transfusion from a family member. Going to Australia and finding Jack was my only option. But he said no. He had a price and I—"

"Did he touch—"

She interrupts him with the shake of her head and the soft whisper of denial because he never laid a finger on her but she wasn't willing to pay his price. She wasn't willing to steal all the things he held dear, to trade a pile of goods for a pound of flesh. And he interrupts her with the shake of his head and the forceful tone of correction because he dallied in those kinds of price tags and paid dearly for it.

"You are the most important thing in my life. I don't want to live without you amidst the darkness. Jack can have everything else."

And suddenly words are tumbling off her lips. A confession she has kept inside her since she made her choice and boarded that plane; a void left when the doctor confirmed her worst fears and her best friend couldn't entirely negate the other. An engulfing hole that leaves her feeling vulnerable everywhere but here in his bathroom with her arms looped around his neck and his fingers touching and trailing from the small of her back to her hips in comfort.

"I feel dead inside."


	8. Part Eight

A tangled web of limbs – her leg draped over his, his arm looped around her waist, their fingers interlaced under her head – until it is impossible to tell where he ends and she begins. His suit coat shoved off his shoulders by her determined fingers; his tie crumpled and fisted in the hand pressed against his chest. The blacks and grays of his attire – colors chosen because they are the exact opposite of purple – clashing with the color of her pajamas and yet somehow blending and matching so perfectly that the threads of him and her are woven into something else entirely.

A millimeter to the left and he could press his lips to hers; a millimeter to the right and she could press her lips to his. Yet the steady blast of hot air into his face mingles with his own, brushes across his cheek, and then slips past his lips to fill his lungs. To give him back the air that was stolen from him by the darkness; to remove the weight crushing his chest that left him sputtering and gasping and desperate for air.

Air he seems to be stealing from her because although their hearts are beating in tandem, her eyes are glazing over with unshed tears and the steady rhythm of her breathing – her chest no longer rising and falling in the same rhythm of his own – is interrupted by another sob threatening to tear through her. The arm draped across her waist slides along her ribcage. Elbow bending so he can cradle her face in his palm and catch the falling tears; thumb moving in a circular motion against her cheekbone until her tears are smoothed away and soaked up by parched skin.

Another apology is murmured into the space between; another apology he can only catch by inching his face forward and closer to hers. Head rearing backwards in a visceral reaction to her words because she has nothing to apologize for. She went to Australia not to flee from him but to save him, and although the story of how she went from Australia to Prague is still lost amidst half-explanations of what exactly Jack demanded of her, he also knows what it is like to lose the dreams guiding you through the darkness until you become so lost that up is down and down is up.

Right now, up is sideways and down is sideways and they are frozen along this plane where neither is inclined to – or, honestly, even knows how to – move forward. A place where they are content to lie side by side and let the world spin on madly without their interfering schemes while they figure out how to right their rickety ship amidst suddenly calmed waters. The eye of the storm passing over them and leaving them clutching to one another as they brace for the onslaught of more.

"I pulled you into the darkness again. You got in that car because you were afraid of losing me."

Words originally meant to comfort now leaving a bitter taste in his mouth and a hollow place in his stomach because he wishes he could take them right back and swallow them whole. Because syllables previously spoken are being twisted around until he doesn't even recognize them anymore, and the meaning is being lost in the vast expanse of the darkness surrounding them.

"I got in that car because I didn't want to spend one more minute without you, because I wanted to make sure you were sure of the risks. I'm just sorry that I didn't –the paparazzi, the speeding – I didn't see those risks for what they were because it was an accident."

"But if it had just been me in the car—"

He closes his eyes at the suggestion because if it had just been her, he wouldn't have been there to push her aside in a miscalculation of safety. If it had just been her, the paparazzi wouldn't have been chasing their six digit payout in the form of a photograph of him and her mid-kiss.

But if it had just been her, maybe she wouldn't be lying here next to him because his assurances wouldn't carry her to the consulate or because Louis changed her mind or because what he thought was true for ninety-seven agonizing seconds turned out to be his reality.

"If I had been selfish and told you the truth when you called; if we hadn't gotten into Nate's town car instead of yours; if Gossip Girl hadn't sent out that blast announcing where we were – we've played this game before, Blair, and we both know how it ends."

Hate codified in words and solidified in the tearing of stockings and bowties until they tried to go up in flames together and only one of them was burnt. Her in the moment under the poised and predatory gleam of Anne Archibald's eye; him many weeks later when waiting for her to find herself independent of him turned out to be waiting for her to realize Humphrey could neither make her knees weak nor appreciate the sinking of her claws in his skin. And then—

What if? What if? What if?

Demons creeping out in the darkness in the reminder of what he did and what he sincerely apologized for without the expectation that she would fall into his arms but because he had let her go and now needed to let himself free. Because maybe he couldn't imagine the day he wouldn't love her – cannot imagine the day he won't love her – but he did want to imagine a day where he wouldn't look at his life and wonder what if, what if, what if.

Yet here he is because one of his 'what if's came true only to shatter into a million new ones. And she wants to play this game all over again because her plans to pretend fell apart – the busy schedule unable to cover up the holes left from cancelled appointments she longs to attend, the finger down her throat unable to stop the flow between her legs, the shoulders firm in resolution unable to withstand broader shoulders firmer in resolution that she stop – around her and this is all she has left.

"I told you before I would shove my finger down your throat for you if I thought it would help, and I would play this game with you again if I thought the same was true of it. But we both know that it won't help, that we're holding onto the—"

"The pain is all I have left!"

He can feel her slipping away – physically, emotionally – even before she cuts him off with an acidic correction that burns him at every place his skin touches hers. And the last thing he wants to do is let her loose because feeling dead inside led him to do drastic things – the rooftop of Victrola, an alleyway in Prague, a train station in Paris – and he wouldn't be able to stand seeing her decide to take her sharp tongue and make things a little more dramatic because if he lost the last bit of their 'us'—

His knees move to clamp around the leg pressed between his; his hand moves to cup her jaw and hold her gaze. Gentle enough that she could still leave if she wants to – the last thing he ever wants to see again is a flash of terror in her eyes at the movement of his hands – yet desperate enough that if she muted the fire in her eyes she might be inclined to stay.

"You have me. Serena and Nate. Your mother and Cyrus. Harold and Roman. Dorota."

He watches as her anger crumbles; her face falling with it. The tears returning to her eyes so quickly that fire turns into flood. A twisting, ravaging path of destruction that wipes out all the words of apology and comfort he said before. The one who has always stood a foot and a half taller than everyone else in his eyes suddenly cut down at his reminder of all who adore her.

"I—I fired Dorota."

Puzzle pieces falling into place with her confession because her rapid attack dog became suddenly muted in the period of time since her return as though it had been surgically fixed. Dorota's willingness to let him step in and pick up the pieces instead of following the edicts of her employer – because everyone knows who she works for and it isn't Eleanor Waldorf – to keep them apart seen in a new light. An unwavering belief not in him but in the hurt she must have felt in the dismissal.

"She's only there because my mother wouldn't allow me to fire her."

And he's quickly correcting her miscalculation of the situation – alarm bells ringing over how clouded her vision has become – because Dorota has seen her at her best and her worst, been used as a pawn in their war games, and lived at the mercy of her cruel tongue and still that woman refuses to leave.

Not even after she was forced to bring him breakfast in bed following three words, eight letters; not even after he promised to double her salary if she would quit the Waldorfs and come work for him in a no holds bar game of war. Her angry cursing in Polish still ringing in his ears long after he was out of the range of her harsh glare; her employer's angry tongue lashing now ringing in his ears while he remains well within range of her withering glare as she moves to sit beside him.

"Stratagem number nineteen: remove the firewood from under the pot. Take out the leading asset instead of attacking an enemy's fighting forces thus directing your attacks against his ability to wage war."

"I'm the one who taught you the Thirty-Six Stratagems, Bass. You can't use them against me."

"All's fair in love and war."

He pushes up to sit beside her just long enough to snag her hand and pull her back down. To tumble back down onto the bed so that he ends up flat on his back with her pressed against his side – her cheek pressed to his chest and the fingers of his right hand stroking the soft, silky patch of skin behind her right ear. The heat of her body transferring to his and filling in the void left by air that rapidly cooled in her brief absence. Her fingers move to fidget with the buttons of his shirt in the brief moment of silence, to pause at the words he speaks softly out into the darkness.

"And it didn't work because Dorota is loyal to you. She only wants you to be happy."

Fingers fidgeting and fingers stroking and moments passing by in silence as he waits for her to realize what he says is true, to realize that Dorota follows her into every scheme, went with her to NYU, and fills in the gaps left by disappearing parents and disappearing friends. And he is half-surprised Eleanor and Cyrus didn't find the maid fetching chocolates and macaroons in Prague considering Vanya approached Lily about putting in a good word for him at Bass Industries after he applied to work at the company's hotel in Monte Carlo starting in November.

His head turns a millimeter to the right until his breath and his words and his lips brush against the crown of her head and mingle with the silky, brunette hair knotted and askew from their movements. Fervently spoken words serving as the answer to every what if scenario formulated in her mind or lurking in the shadows.

"I only want you to be happy."

The magnitude of his answer remaining just as wide and all-consuming as the first time he spoke it. Always willing to let her go; always willing to let her glow on someone else's arm.

Yet now the words ring like a cruel joke in his ears because he's seen how a fairy tale romance and baby on the way can steal her glow and leave her paralyzed. Seen her give up the fairy tale for l'amour fou and basked in the warming light of the glow he helped returned to her features. Seen her happiness and his happiness go hand-in-hand only to be severed in a cruel twist of fate leaving neither of them able to move forward and get it back without the other.

"My baby died. My fian—Louis blames me. My family and my friends and Humphrey think I abandoned you."

"You went to Australia—"

The reminding prompt is unnecessary for she is already tossing back words about Prague and skipping bits and pieces of the story so quickly that he is unable to follow. Characters twisted into caricatures of themselves – the revelation of his uncle's good deed even causing him to protest her casting Jack as the big, bad wolf – almost as though Humphrey was writing this narrative for her.

"Slow down, Waldorf. Why Prague?"

"You were shot there. You had to have received a blood transfusion, and I thought if I could just find—d"

Mouths twisting into mutual grimaces – hers because the memories of him bleeding and broken without her knowledge still haunt her and his because the bullet was through and through and any lingering fragments were flushed out by Eva's uncle's bootlegged vodka.

"Jack called. He said the easiest way to turn you inside out wasn't to trade the Empire or Bass Industries for your life but to take me out of the equation. I-I didn't know what to do. I was paralyzed."

"And that's why you stayed away. You made a deal with the devil."

"I would have made a deal with God himself if I thought he'd answer my prayers."

Deep eyes holding his; raw determination seeping in and crushing whatever hint of innocence remains. Beg and barter. Activities he so rarely sees her engage in because she's always been willing to get dirty in the muck of stealing secrets and gleaming unsavory information. The kind of information that can be used to bend people to her will so the Ivies shut their doors to them or they pack their bags and never return.

Except she has nothing on God and only herself to offer up to the devil. Beg or barter. His jaw locking and the words becoming lodged in his throat over the realization of what his life cost her because he would give up everything for her and those costs seem minuscule compared to what she traded in the end.

Sunshine and perfection damped by fervent worry bursts into their lives with his name tumbling off her lips and her blonde hair flouncing behind her as she moves from room to room. Eyes narrowing at the emptiness found within; eyes softening at the sight of him and her tangled up in one another.

Limbs separating until she has left his embrace and fallen into his sister's. And he wants to be selfish and cruel and keep her all to himself, but Serena has been her sister long before she ever became his and he learned many years ago that more than he is needed in her life. An eerie calm easily deluding people into believing she doesn't care that will shatter and break with a vengeance when she is kept apart from Serena for too long.

The slap of the blonde's hand against his shoulder – something she surely learned from the brunette – as she demands to know why he didn't answer his phone and keep her abreast in the same way she promised to do for him sending him hissing and sidling away. Kindred spirits in their determination to protect and stabilize found once more in the way she returned to Doctor Sherman to find the office in an uproar and he returned to the land of the living to find his entire life in an uproar.

And he has his own questions – why Serena left her alone when she promised him otherwise being first and foremost – but they are pushed aside as he watches their interaction. Observes the tender way Serena asks what happened and then touches and holds her best friend at the soft confession that she started her period today.

Grim realization that there is no other way to hide from the stark red reality of what was lost twisting all of their features into sorrowful frowns. His legs thrown over the edge of the bed, her legs buckling, and the pale and misty-eyed brunette pressed between them as they all perch in a row on the edge of the bed. Apologies whispered as Serena squeezes her right shoulder and he kisses the left; apologies accepted but unregistered with the absent minded nodding of her head.

"I won't to go back there."

"B—"

"Doctor Sherman doesn't understand. He thinks this is like before."

He wants to snap out words about how it is exactly like before because she is still trying to control her body and morph it into a state that it cannot attain. He wants to whisper out words about how it is hard for people who aren't them to understand because they weren't there. Because they didn't feel that current of assured excitement coursing through and lighting up their lives with the boom and shake and sparkle of a million fireworks only to feel it dissipate so quickly that all one can do is fumble through the resulting darkness looking for a light switch.

But her hand is slipping inside his own – hot and clammy and damp with collected tears – and all he can do is reassure her that he alone does, in fact, understand. The desire to grasp onto a chosen poison kept him afloat through all the times he didn't know how to deal with the emotions coursing through him – loss and agony, a lack of assurance in them and then too much assurance that turned him into something he didn't recognize– but it also drowned him in moments that mattered most and he doesn't want to lose her this way again.

"I dropped my phone. I had to leave."

"Your phone?"

Realization dawning in his eyes over what exactly brought her to him – loss of her reassurance of his love for her. The moments he lived without her phone – his own assurance that what they had still meant something to her – suddenly worth it because some messages lost forever are never truly lost. Three words, eight letters that sit permanently on the tip of his tongue waiting for a moment when they can be enough to make her glow with happiness.

And his sister takes one look at his face and excuses herself because she has seen this emotion before – the desperate need to be set free compounded by a fear that what he has to say will not make her happy. Maybe she doesn't understand what they have – maybe no one really understands what they have – but she knows enough about her brother and her best friend to know that two wrongs can make a right. Twisted paths colliding into one another over and over again because they can't fight it and all they can do is figure out how to straighten it out, how to pick up the pieces of themselves in rubble of their collision, how to move forward together despite the risks.

The fingers interlaced in hers squeezing tightly in an attempt to get her attention; brunette hair skimming against her shoulder as she turns to look at him. And he wants to repeat the message she lost back to her, wants to assure her because he said it once and has never once looked back. The only moment in his life where he stopped playing 'what if' and just allowed himself to feel; the only moment in his life he does not look back upon and wonder what if, what if, what if.

But the eyes locked with his are crowded with syllables and letters abutted by those two words, six letters and question marks, and he is struggling to find the assertion that what she said in the car still holds true today amidst all the questions clouding his ability to see. She promised to never leave him yet faltered when the Tasmanian devil came knocking on her door. She promised to stay away from him yet faltered when the Manhattan devil refused to stay away. He wants one not the other and, truth be told, doesn't know if he'll surviving losing her once more.

So he looks deeper – peering into that soul he knows she has, peeling back layer after layer of icy fortitude to look for the truth within. A search and rescue mission that brings him right back to the scene of the crime - the moment he saw a girl he didn't recognize – and propelling him forward to what he thought would be the conclusion of this mystery novel: her fervent assurance that in the face of fairy tales and happily-ever-afters, she wouldn't give up on messy, crazy true love.

"You sat in the car and you said you'd never go. We were going to spend the rest of our lives together. I was going to love your baby as much as I love you."

Tears returning to her eyes as she questions his statement; tears wiped away as he corrects it immediately because nothing is ever past tense when it comes to them and he loves her baby as much as he loves her. It might have been the catalyst to the mourning of his dreams; it might have been something he wished was different if only so she would come back to him. But it became part of the 'us' he wanted for so long, and for the briefest of moments he had held that dream in his hands and thought it would become reality.

"You told me you loved me. I know it was true."

Eyebrows knitting in confusion and head shaking side to side over the way he is questioning her statement. Legs unfurling to stand as she musters all she strength she has to correct the way he uses past tense to describe her feelings.

And he watches as the powerful woman he fell in love with explodes back into his life with the hot crackle of a roaring fire. Stares up in instinctual awe as she runs her fingers along his neck to his jaw and tips back his head. Raw, honest emotion coursing through him as she places her palms against his cheeks, holds his gaze, and dips past the darkness of fear mixing with pain to find him the way only she knows how to.

"Of course, I love you, Chuck. I've always loved you. I love you more and more every day, if it's even possible to love someone that much."

His hands move slowly from where they rest between his legs against the crumpled bedspread to brush against her arms – fingers curling around her wrists and holding her in place. The veil of scotch and sadness lifted so quickly that he is momentarily blinded by her confession.

And he longs to hold her in place and freeze this moment in time where up is up and down is down and the world can still spin on madly without their interfering schemes because he has the remaining pieces of the 'us' he wanted so badly held in his hands once again.

"Then why would you think it would be any different for me?"

Only the engulfing silence is pierced by the deployment of her trademark statement by her best friend ending their moment as they both turn to look at the blonde through the hazy blocks of glass serving as a wall between them and her. A shout of 'oh my god' that pulls them apart for she flees for the relative safety of the living room – a place where she can turn her attention to Serena's freak-out rather than concentrating on dealing with her own feelings – and he remains seated on the bed.

Trying to gather his breath and swallow back the tears as Monkey pokes his head around the newly opened doors. Trying to gather his composure and swallow back his anger as Monkey trots after him as he saunters out of the room to stand right behind her. Serena's eyes widening as she sees him approaching; Serena's eyes darting from her brother to her best friend to the phone clutched in her hand.

"Give me the phone, Serena."

Ardent refusal circumvented by the buzz of the BlackBerry lying on the coffee table; petite and nimble features giving the brunette an advantage in the lunge to gather up the phone. And he watches as she opens the first in a series of text messages, steps in when the color – what little there is – drains from her face, and catches her elbow as she falls to sit on the edge of his red couch.

The phone still tightly curled in her hand; the information still tightly held out of his reach as Nate arrives to complete the last of their foursome. Hand running through his hair as he enters the room; hand palming himself through his pajama pants as lethargy sends his mouth twisting into a yawn. Except the withering glares of Nate's two ex-girlfriends cause the blonde to pause in his questioning over the interruption to his sleep. Except the withering glares allow the brunette to snatch the phone and question another part of his life being kept from him out of a misguided attempt on the part of his friends to protect him.

_Miss me, Upper East Siders? Have you been asking yourselves if you're better off now than you were two months ago? Trapped under the weight of a false accusation, I've done a lot of thinking about the kind of girl I want to be from now on. I'd like to be the kind that does what she says she's going to do. _

_And what I say I'm going to do is be your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite – starting with one Nathaniel Archibald. _

_They say the best kinds of friends are the ones who stab you in the front. I wonder if Chuck Bass would still agree once he finds out that his best friend might be on the path to becoming his daddy. His step-daddy, that is. Or maybe Blair Waldorf will take comfort in a reminder of how selfish her first boyfriend was when she learns that he's been hushing up his family's role in her accident. I suppose only time will tell. _

_As for me, time will show that I'm serious about my new found gusto for being, well, me. You know you love me. XOXO – Gossip Girl_


	9. Part Nine

Courage is fleeting. Today, the only adjective she has to hold on to is the one placed upon her and written out beside her name in a blast sent out during her high school graduation by Gossip Girl. A weakling, a fledgling pushed out of the nest only to fall with a hard thump onto the ground below. Dead leaves – dull, brown, and torn – scattering in the wind until nothing is left to break her fall.

There used to be a branch – olive more often than not – extended out for her to grasp onto. And when a branch failed to appear, hands would pick her off the ground and return her to the nest. Hands that did not realize the damage such an action would inflict; hand that did not realize that she would be so drenched in his scent that everyone around her would titter and stare until she had no choice but leave once more and learn to fly.

Fly higher and higher with brave and graceful swoops and beautiful wings outstretched to his perch above the city where she finds him watching the minions still in the nest below with bemusement and watching her flying above with awe. Or maybe those hands did realize because Dumbo could always fly; he just needed a magic feather to give him the confidence to try.

Except today there is no magic feather and she feels neither brave nor beautiful as she searches out his perch above the city. As she finds him with his jaw locked and his hands tinged blue from the cold despite the warmth of the afternoon sun. And neither her footsteps on the rooftop patio nor the way the shadow of her body moves across the bright red sign and casts it into the darkness catches his eye.

Only when his name – a single fractured syllable – rises above the sound of angry taxis and near constant construction below does he turn to look at her. Only when his name – a gasp tinged with perceived pity – ghosts off her lips does he allow her to see the torrent of emotions lurking behind his eyes.

The yearning to reach out and touch his cheek nearly consumes her. Locked in a battle to coddle him through his weakness and allow them both to fall to the hard ground with a thud or be the hands that pick him up and return him to the nest so he has no choice but to learn to fly.

The cramps in her lower body complicate her decision for they weaken her further. Their omnipresent reminder of all that she has lost pushing her back into the dark seclusion of that crumpled car where she had tried to be the hands and ignored all the signs of what else could be wrong. Pushing her back into the dark sequester of that hotel room in Prague where she tried to be the hands and instead became paralyzed with indecision.

Because does she sell her soul to save the remaining pieces of her heart, or sell pieces of his soul to save his life? Sell, barter, beg, and trade as she made one last ditched effort and picked up the phone to call her ex-fiancé to inquire about a possible match in the Monaco blood bank only to have her refusal to face facts and insistence on dabbling in fiction cause her fingers to skip over the international calling number for the country she was set to rule and press down the one key instead.

Always and forever her number one.

Once before and now again, she does not know who or what save him – the clock on her deal with the Tasmanian devil not scheduled to run out for another two days. Once before and now again, she stands before him and marvels over every intake of air because he is alive and she can survive on that knowledge alone if she tries hard enough. Once before and now again, she finds herself fighting to hold onto the gaze of a man who is lost in a torrent of fear and confusion and longing and pain. Once before and now again, she is caught up in the internal struggle between the little boy who wants a mother and the young man who cannot stand to set himself up to be hurt again.

"She's been in New York for months. Inviting me to parties. Hiring my friends. Hanging out in my apartment in her underwear. Banging my best friend."

The words are spat out with such venom that the winner of this internal struggle is obvious for his rage mounting and burning as bright as the sign atop of his hotel at night. Yet the little boy lurking below comes out kicking and screaming; his heartfelt desire coming out in a hoarse whisper and shining brightly in his eyes.

"Did it not occur to her to mention this—that she is my mother?"

The rage builds inside her so quickly that her eyes fall shut in an attempt to hold it in. The reminder of what he promised to do before they got in that car and the reaffirmation of his promise only moments ago roaring to the forefront of her mind and twisting her body and her thoughts in a million knots because she knows they were true and she cannot stand to see him renege on them now.

And she never hesitated in her decision to slip her hand inside his and hold it tightly and choose him because he has Lily and she has Cyrus and they both know the parent who loves and supports you the most is not always the one that you born to. Sometimes it is the person who comes in later into your life when your flaws are established and loves you anyways; the person who chooses you even when they do not have to or you cannot see why they would want to call you their own.

"You have a mother."

The name that tumbles off his lips causes her eyes to flash in anger because that woman swept in on a lie and tied such a complicate knot in their 'us' that it has taken them years to untangle the mess. It was his choice and his decision to take it to the place he did, but Elizabeth Fisher was part of the catalyst that sent him down a path diverging so greatly from the one those who truly love him wanted him to take.

Her correction is echoed back to her as his brows furrow in confusion, and yet there is that spark of recognition in his eyes and a certain amount of fondness seeping into his voice that neither can ignore. Lily van der Woodsen chose him and, in his own way, he chose her.

And sometimes he loses sight of that fact admits the darkness of fear and certainty of loneliness, but she is always willing to shine a light and remind him of what he has. Even when their paths diverge so substantially she cannot even see his; even when the knot is pulled so tightly she can barely breathe.

"Do you really think that this woman is more of a mother to you than Lily? Do you—"

The words formulating her second question scream to be let loose and rail against the clamped jaw holding them in. And he is turning towards her and looking at her as though he is waiting for her to take a step off the edge and show him how to fly.

"Do you really think you would be—would have been less of a father to my baby than Louis?"

She winces as the correction between present and past tense; she winces at the suggestion that he would have cast himself as the understudy rather than the lead. Because she heard the sincerity behind his words. Because she constructed a dream in her head of Switzerland or Tokyo only to have him awaken her with a kiss and a promise that they could raise her baby and be an 'us' right here in Manhattan. Because she learned a long time ago that one father is not enough and she desperately wanted her baby to be surrounded by people who love him or her for who they are and not what they could be.

Instead, her baby was the victim of a cruel crime and only lived amidst the abstract of the 'us' she dreamed of for the briefest of moments. Dreams that became nightmares cloaked in darkness and drenched in the color red that play out in her head and remain cloistered inside her heart.

So she cannot fly today. The cramping around her pelvis leaves her with nothing but the desire to pull the covers over her head or stick her finger down her throat. The brightness of the sun casting its harsh glare and reminding her that she, the former Queen of Constance that high school students up and down this island speak of in hushed reverence and that housewives in middle America admire photographs of on the pages of their glossy but gossipy magazines, is standing in a semi-public place at midday in her pajamas with smudged makeup and tangled hair.

But his fingers are skimming against her elbow and trailing down the arm of the coat she borrowed from Serena when she stopped letting her weakness hold her and decided to follow him up here in a reminder that somehow he is still ready to catch her even as she is trying to do the same for him.

"In that back of that car, you were worrying about test scores and schools, and all I could think was how I needed to make reservations for tea at the Carlyle for her fifth birthday like Harold did for you. How I'd need to become better at basketball just in case he likes sports. How Monkey would adjust to having a baby around. It never once crossed my mind that I would be any less the baby's father after you gave me the opportunity to be that for him or her."

His fingers slide around hers, but she is the one who interlaces them together until they are holding hands and clutching on to each other. He steps towards her, but she is the one who drags him closer to her until he is off the raised platform of the patio and away from the ledge that, rationally, she knows he was not even near yet, irrationally, will always try to protect him from.

"She is not my mother."

Her head shakes side to side as she confirms his answer because the little boy lurking beneath is resurfacing and she hates to see him disappointed again. Biologically speaking, maybe Diana is his mother and maybe she has a good reason for walking away from him and if Diana was the one to donate the blood he needed to save his life, then the woman he loves will be the first in line to thank her.

But Diana was not there when his father died or when his uncle tried to steal his company or when he was shot and tried to throw everything away or when the woman he loves convinced him to get into a car that propelled him head first in the darkness and left him broken and bleeding. And her free hand rises up to press against his cheek and trail against his neck in an attempt to comfort and apologize and demand of him all over again.

"You have become such a wonderful person. I don't want you to lose that."

Because change is inevitable in light of what they lost and how their 'us' is so broken and torn and tattered and flapping in the wind, but she hopes this is change with its apologies and promises remains a constant. She underestimated it once and apologized for her mistake and now she hopes she will not overestimate it and have to listen to him apologize for his mistake

But his promise and the way his fingers fit so perfectly inside hers are her reassurances. And she longs to prattle off the names of those who love him just as he did for her, but her mind becomes continually stuck on the one that would have been at the top of her list.

The blast from Gossip Girl had thrown them all for a loop and erupted into such infighting amidst the members of the Non-Judging Breakfast Club not seen since she found out Nate slept with Serena or since Nate found out she slept with Chuck. Words and accusations thrown at the male blonde of their group because how could he not tell them what he knew until Serena stepped in for Nate and she left to find her sparring partner who unexpectedly disappeared halfway through to go lick the wounds they were not talking about.

Her murmured question about why he did not tell them immediately is answered with a reminder of who their best friends are – perfection at everything but scheming and takedowns and usually cohorts in some misguided attempt to protect their best friends that usually backfires. It is why they ambushed her about the return of her condition yesterday; it is why neither of them told him about how long she stayed.

And then he is gesturing with his eyes for her to turn and look at those lurking in the shadows of the entrance to the Empire's rooftop for Serena and Nate stand on the parameter of this scene because both of them learned the hard way about what happens when you interrupt the brunettes who like to hold hands.

Sunshine and confusion walking forward hesitantly yet rushing out words to explain yet again that Nate discovered Tripp's role in the accident less than hour before he received Serena's call about the intervention for her condition. That he wanted to tell them both right away but thought maybe it was best to wait a day or two until one brunette saw Doctor Sherman and the other brunette could be assured he had not lost everything. That he was misguided, yes, but the situation with Tripp is delicate and—

"Your cousin tried to kill you, Nate, and instead he took my baby and nearly took Chuck."

She can hear the apologetic sympathy in Nate's voice as he repeats her name and feel it in the way he steps forward so his fingers brush against her free hand. She can hear the rebuttal to her comment that she has to leave in the way Serena says just the first letter of her name and yet she can feel the acceptance of her comment in the way fingers entwined with here unfurl their grasps. Because he was in the car and he was a part of this and his gut reaction is just the same as hers.

"I don't want to wish it was you, Nate, because the four of us are family, but right now—I can't be here."

And with one last look over her shoulder at the only one who truly understands, she hurries away from his perch above the city and back down towards the cold room stripped of warmth and familiarity and soft touches.

Her best friend follows her like a shadow; a role reversal for the woman who sees herself as Darth Vader next to Sunshine Barbie. But Serena keeps her surprise to herself at the announcement that her clothes hang in the closet, and she is thankful for her best friend's hovering in the moment where she must remove her pajama pants and watch legs, underwear, and the white flap wings of the pad between her legs disappear under the brightly patterned skirt that in no way matches her mood or the season.

And she is even more grateful to have the woman she fights with yet considers her sister when Arthur maneuvers the limo in front of her house and Serena spies Dan pacing in front of the building. Months ago, she would have taken his attempt to comfort her over the Gossip Girl blast and used it as a diversion to mask her confusion and anxiety over a wrong goodbye, but her pain is so far reaching that it touches her even in Brooklyn. Serena keeps her from even trying to use it as a diversion because she is one step ahead for once in her life, running interference and discussing the shock of Gossip Girl's information with the Brooklynite while her best friend escapes into the building. Serena's eyes lighting up the way they used to years ago when she just discovered Humphrey; her eyes lighting up so brightly that her best friend is cast in their light until the elevator doors close and she is suddenly left alone.

Left alone for only a moment because the elevator doors open and the Polish maid stops with a tray full of appetizers to peer at her with equal parts cool dismissal and fiery warning. A warning she does not have time to register for her mother's assistant spies her first and pounces on her like a predator on prey before she can even make it all the way up the back staircase. A fledgling bird caught in the claws of a stir crazy house cat until the owner – yet decidedly not the hands that carry her – come in and pull them apart.

"Where have you been? You were supposed to be assisting at the photoshoot this morning."

And the challenge to her mother's question comes rushing out because there is nothing for her to assist with. Because all the years she sat backstage during her mother's fashion shows or watched Eleanor's photoshoots just ended with her being admonished to stay out of the way. Her seating chart and her modeling career – the two times she even came close to assisting – were over and forgotten even before they really began.

But Eleanor seems unperturbed by her rebuttal as her eyes narrow and she begins to pick apart her daughter's clothes. A skirt several years old, a blouse from three seasons ago, this season's coat still damp from where the Empire's staff tried to clean it, and legs bare to the early spring chill. And her voice morphs from that of the demanding and controlling designer and CEO of Eleanor Waldorf Designs to that of an imperfect mother. Still somewhat cold and detached but warmer than the coldness her daughter feels alone in the darkness.

"Blair, darling, I am very concerned."

"I had an appointment with Doctor Sherman."

Eleanor echoes the last two words of her statement as her knees buckle, as she sinks onto the bunch outside her daughter's bedroom without the grace her daughter normally associates with her mother. A tiny breakdown briefly smoothed other as Eleanor barks for Laurel to leave them – now! And her daughter waits for the harsh bark to be directed at her, but instead eyes clouded with worry and quickly misting over with tears look up at her as her mother tries to answer the questions formulating in her head.

"It was the stress of the atelier, wasn't it? Cyrus tried to tell me that school and the internship would be too much and that maybe you should stay with Harold and Roman and recuperate at their vineyard. But I wanted you here where I could watch over you. I wanted to keep you busy because you are a Waldorf woman and we keep busy when others think we should rest because it is how we cope."

And she wants to assure her mother that her assumption was correct, that her time at the atelier listening to argument over heel heights and hem lengths and at Columbia immersed in the art and architecture of Paris were the only times she was ever truly distracted. The only times she could stop to catch her breath. But losing ten pounds, getting a facelift, and throwing herself into Waldorf Designs is not going to help her like it did her mother following her father's decision to step out of the closet because, after all, she is just as much Harold's daughter as she is Eleanor's.

But the words become lodged in her throat because her mother's desire to keep her here is everything she wants for her baby and her attempts at doing just that – or, at least her attempts to delude herself into thinking she'd never have the see the red stain of reality – had pulled her apart at the seams and not even Waldorf Designs' top seamstress can stitch the frayed pieces of her heart back together.

"I wanted to show you the intricacies of running the company so you would be ready to take over when Cyrus and I retire to Paris at the end of next year."

The announcement catches her off guard because she never imagined this to be her mother's reasoning for dispatching her on fools' errands or for giving up dinner with the representative from Bendel's the other night. Because, yes, fashion is art and architecture and history and everything she loves all in one, but she is not a designer and—

"I want you to take over Waldorf Designs at the end of 2013 when Cyrus' partnership at his law firm is dissolved."

"Why didn't you say so?"

"Because you are your father's daughter, and I knew you would find a million reasons as to why you can't. Besides, Waldorf women fight for what they want. I wanted you to love the company as I do so your ascension as CEO would not be a passive takeover but a passionate one.

"I don't know what to say."

"You can start by saying yes, changing your clothes, and coming back downstairs. Mister Alyseka has been asking after you all morning. The man will not shut up about the new direction of Waldorf Designs you sold him on."

"Me."

"Yes, you."

Her arms curl immediately around her mother's neck; her embrace tightening because just for a moment she can sweep all her sorrow and focus on the excitement. And Eleanor squeezes her daughter back just as fiercely before her cheek grazes against her daughter's hair and her lips find her daughter's ear to whisper the words she cannot allow herself to say with people eavesdropping below.

"And then after Mister Alyseka leaves, you and Cyrus and I are going to call your father and discuss Doctor Sherman and the return of your—condition."

It is not a question and it is not a statement but rather a directive not from boss to employee but from a desperate yet assertive mother to her daughter. A directive that hangs in the air even after Eleanor heads back down the stairs to rejoin the post-photoshoot soirée slipping past Serena with the breathy praise she reserves only for the blonde.

Serena's eyebrows raised in confusion are pitched higher as she walks into Blair's bedroom and watches her best friend peel off her clothes and shuffle through those hanging on the racks in her closet in a frantic search for the perfect dress. Her eyebrows only partially smoothed down as Blair explains how Eleanor wants her to take over Waldorf Designs, but her concern mounting internally that maybe her best friend is casting herself as the lead of a movie that no one else can see.

But for just a moment, Serena allows herself to get wrapped up in the excitement as the brunette curls her hair and slips on a headband. For just a moment, a smile returns to a face that has been pulled and morphed by ever increasing worry as her best friend asks to borrow her phone. For just a moment, she allows her best friend to slink out of her view as the words being spoken softly into the phone reach her ears. And for just a moment, Serena catches a glimpse of what could have been and the light of what might still be as Blair informs Chuck about her mother's decision, about the way she charmed the representative from Bendel's so completely that he has been asking for her all morning, about the way she needs his support later tonight.


	10. Part Ten

**Author's Note:** I wanted to take a moment to assure those readers who feel like progress has been very slow in this story. My purpose in writing this story wasn't so much to correct the mistake of romantically linking Dan and Blair, although I have no intention of repeating that tragedy, but in correcting the mistake of how Blair losing her baby was handled. If you believe in the Kübler-Ross Model – better known as the five stages of grief – then one has to go through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression before reaching the acceptance stage. I won't divulge which stage Chuck and Blair are in as I loathe giving out even a glimpse of my outline, but I have continually kept this theory in mind while writing this story and each chapter contains a significant event despite a perceived slowness in the progress of the story.

* * *

Civility of the incivility – a situation he grown accustomed to over the years because sometimes to get your needs met, you have to choose an unsavory partner. A private investigator just as skilled at finding all your secrets as those of your adversary whose loyalty is only as deep as your pockets. An uncle hell bent on the destruction of his nephew whose veins incidentally hold the only thing that can save said nephew. An anonymous blogger who gets off on sharing secrets and ruining peoples' lives whose vast network of informants hold the key to the mystery of why this happened to them and who committed such a horrific crime.

A bed made by others prepared and readied for him as the incriminating photographs – the only evidence of this crime – are spread out before him. His best friend encouraging him to lie in bed with the one who set that horrid chain of events in motion as he shuffles from one photo to the next and points out the shadowy figure in the background of the photographs. The man who drained the town car of vital brake fluid so they could not stop even if she had changed her mind and was no longer sure is shown lurking just behind the parked cars in the very last photograph of the stack.

A risk he had not calculated; a risk he barely sees because even now he is distracted by those in the forefront of the screenshot from the grainy security camera mounted in the garage. Yellow sweater, small glowing smile, and his hand pressed against her back. The last point in the before to his after.

"I know Gossip Girl isn't exactly our favorite person right now, but the photos don't lie."

And yet something is not adding up because Gossip Girl would not be the first gossip site to doctor a photo and, given her most recent posting, it seems unimaginable that she would want to help Nate in his attempt at playing Nancy Drew. Nate's suggestion that maybe the gossip monger turned whistleblower was peeved he would sit on the information for twenty-four hours is met with the murmured, acidic reply that she would not be the only one.

A comment that is taken in stride for the expected outburst of anger was performed alone on his perch above the city. The passersby below unperturbed as the construction below swallows his sounds; the friend standing beside him unflinching as the photograph of the before is pushed aside and out of view. The only remaining visual of the moment that was happy for them both because his dreams were coming true and his best friend was no longer a spectator to the long, arduous will-they-or-won't-they punctuated with reunions and wrong goodbyes that had come to define their lives over the past year.

Another piece of the evidence – weak yet substantial, a conclusion yet somehow still only the beginning – is plucked off the table and held up to the light because the man with the envelope standing in front of the Empire fails to fit into the narrative being spun for him. Conjecture about familial ties and the contents of the envelope being cash barely meeting his standards for a scheme let alone anything else. Yet the conceding confession that some of the pieces fail to fit is quickly followed up with an explanation of how the blond plans to move forward: a half-formed scheme concocted by the novice schemers in their group of four while the masters were busy dealing with the fallout of Gossip Girl's revelation alone on the roof.

Busy facing the reality that an accident was actually a crime; busy facing the reality that people who choose to stay deserve certain titles more than those who choose to leave and return at whim. Busy facing the reality that rooftop ledges and fingers shoved down their throats will not bring back the dreams they barely allowed themselves to weave that were ripped apart in the blink of an eye.

A scheme where the two blondes will stage a fight and then stage a comforting reunion between a man and his former mistress until all the gaps in this investigation are filled in and all the connections between a grandfather and his heir are severed. A scheme requiring acting abilities he is not entirely convinced the two have; a scheme that could work but leaves too much up to change, depends too much on his sister's feminine wiles, and fails to subdue the need for revenge currently needling him in the heart.

An angry, unrelenting jab that stokes the fires burning hot and bright inside him; an illumination against the darkness of despair that leads him down a particular path. A shove forward that threatens to bring him to his knees because a fist to the jaw is Nathaniel's specialty and hands that try to imitate such responses cost him more than he would ever be willing to gamble again. A decision too often made in haste and anger that can and will rob him of the opportunity to correct a mistake made years before.

So he interrupts, concocts a new plan, and plunges his best friend back into confusion because, yes, he has had a private investigator on speed dial for years, but the police have so rarely played such a prominent role in his schemes and solutions before.

"There are three things I care about, Nathaniel—"

And his best friend throws in with a semi-serious, semi-teasing grin the words that used to be true about his life before a limo ride left him unable to sleep and feeling like there is something inside his stomach – fluttering. Before categories were established where money and the pleasure money brings him were rolled into one; Nathaniel's ranking on the list expanded to include the van der Woodsen women and an adopted mutt; and the brunette from whom the butterflies derive their strength and their beauty that became an entity of adoration, consideration, and care all unto herself.

"Two years ago, Serena was the one in the car. Then it was Blair and I and the baby. Who is to say that next time your cousin won't succeed in hurting you and getting away with it again?"

His challenge to the suggestion that the culprit be allowed to self-report is answered not by Nathaniel but by the clatter of a cell phone buzzing across a glass table. A cell phone he snatches up in his hand half-expecting to find another blast; a cell phone that continues to buzz as the name of his sister flashes on the screen. A cell phone that sends a thrill of panic coursing through him; a cell phone he holds up to his ear and tries not to let the panic drip from his voice as he questions the caller.

One word into her correction of his misidentification and he knows that it is her. Strangers may not smile at the coquettish sound of her laughter, but her voice reaches deep inside him and pulls on the parts of him that he once did not know existed. Melts the cold exterior and sends the wings of the butterflies inside him beating so quickly that he has no choice but to excuse himself from the quizzical and confused gaze of his best friend.

The door to his bedroom quickly opened and then shut behind him because her perfume still lingers and he does not want to let it go. The crumpled blankets and dented pillows left uncorrected while the clothes are left scattered on the floor because moving anything would smooth away all traces that she was once here. That she came to him and, for a brief moment, he was allowed to lie down at the feet of his queen, hold her in his arms, and finally began to breathe again.

A burst of fresh air returning and filling his lungs as she tells him about her mother's decision, about the way she charmed the representative from Bendel's so completely that he has been asking for her all morning. A burst of warmth returning and illuminating him in this darkened room because she sounds more and more like herself – the young woman ready to make a power play for the throne despite her youth, the young woman who craved her mother's validation and finally received it – with each and every word.

A malicious twisting of his stomach as her voice becomes restrained, as she sinks back into the woman she was this morning – broken, mourning, and fearful – and explains that her mother knows about the return of her condition – the word the Waldorfs use to ghost around the problem causing his stomach to roll - and plans to inform her father.

"I don't—Can you be he—"

"I'll have Arthur bring the limo around."

The silence holds them both; the silence answering his question that maybe she was not going to ask him to come. The silence breaking with her softly whispered words of thanks because he understands how much she loathes to disappoint Daddy, because he is the one she ran to when her solution failed her, because he is the only one who understands the before and the after and the moments in between.

Except, as the line clicks off in his ear, he wonders if maybe he does not understand. At least, not in the ways that matter because she was so quick to apologize even after the revelation that she tried to save him when he was the one who refused to answer her the way she wanted him to when she called, he was the one who mucked it all up over and over again, he was the one who insisted she did not have the moves—

He swallows back this second game of 'what if' because there are some things he will never wish to undo, some moments he will never look back upon with regret, and some places that will always be sacred no matter what. Pieces of their 'us' that he will hold onto forever even as they do the tango of hello and goodbye; the resolve for retribution needling him further when he thinks about how that tango came close to ending.

Eyes rise from the evidence of the events of the past to the evidence of the events of the present; eyes soften with half-confusion and half-understanding as he finalizes his edicts and the decision of the group with a phone call to his private investigator and another to his driver.

"You really want to go this route?"

"Before the accident, she was ready to run away with me, spend the rest of our lives together, raise the baby together, and now—Do you not see what he cost her? What he cost me?"

"I do. I'm going to see to it that he doesn't get away with this."

His exit is stopped only for a moment by the engulfing topic that hangs between them because neither one of them wants to touch it. His gaze dart to hold that of his friend and to make sure that the words he says are understood as final because she is not his mother and he is needed by someone who actually is his family.

* * *

The ebb and flow of people jostling to get closer to the queen leaves him on the outskirts of the room yet admiration fills him as he watches the scene from the foyer of the Waldorf penthouse just beside the elevator. The return of her glow casting out a brilliant light that entrances all those around her like moths to a flame; the return of her glow reminding him of just how much he loves to see her shine.

Of how he was willing to beg, barter, steal, and sell his soul to see her smile like this for the rest of their lives even if it meant lurking in the shadows. A place he thinks he will have to return to when her smile falters at the sight of him, when her gaze is pulled away from his by one of those in the crowd before he has to chance to read the words written in soul and reflected in her eyes.

But there are others who see him – the best friend confined to the perimeter of the room because not everyone loves days of endless sunshine, the mother on the edge of the circle watching her daughter be anything but passive, the maid who sneaks up behind him and offers him a grateful smile as she takes his coat, and the stepfather who stops him on the edge of the living to offer him a glass of scotch.

"She came to you."

The words are pressed upon him as the glass is pressed into his hand. The merry twinkle of her stepfather's eyes showing just how well Cyrus knows this game – the chase of a Waldorf woman, the way grief can swallow a person whole. Words meant to remind him that while her glow moves with her, eventually it will find its way into the shadows and illuminate both their paths. Words meant to sustain him as her stepfather inquires after his business and employees of Waldorf Designs twitter around them in not so hushed voices about how often Mister Alyseka kept enquiring after a lowly intern.

The Waldorf women may have never met a party theme they did not like, but they also have never thrown a party they did not know how to end. Coats and farewells given out in tandem as guests are shown to the elevator and business deals are solidified even before he has the chance to finish his drink. Eleanor's smile melting off her face just as soon as the elevator door closes; Eleanor's voice dropping just as soon as she turns to face those still assembled in the living room.

"Laurel, what are you still doing here? Out! Out!"

The assistant chased out by the same motherly concern that causes Eleanor's eyes to flick towards the taller of the two men in the room. A harden gaze that softens as she watches her daughter tangle her fingers with his and brush her cheek against his shoulder in a debate of whether she has the right to rest her burdens upon him.

Burdens he gladly gathers up as his hello is a murmured whisper against her hair and his weary body leans into hers. Burdens he gently holds and carries in his hands as he asks how she is feeling while his lips ghost against her cheek.

Yet her reply is engulfed by the force that is her mother. Words scattered to the wind as Eleanor dials the numbers he once employed in a threat – thirty-three five six two and so on – and explains the situation to her ex-husband in terms that cause her daughter to press her body deeper into the sofa. Words scattered to the wind as he drops his arm over the back of the sofa and strokes her shoulder, as she leans into his embrace and squeezes the hand of her best friend seated on the other side of her when the call is placed on speaker.

"What happened, Blair Bear?"

Tears gather in the corner of her eyes; tears fall as she explains that she never meant for her condition to get so out of hand. Words and excuses he has heard before offered up as enough of an explanation only to be splintered by the soft confession those gathered strained to hear.

"Chuck and I were going to raise the baby together."

His eyes slide across the room looking for hints of surprise, and yet no one gathered bats an eye and no one listening on one side of the phone call or the other lets out a gasp. No one she loves seems at all perturbed by the announcement that she was going to give up a crown and man that loved her in a way too many saw as right for a man that loves her in a way too many see as crazy. "You knew?"

"You and Charles were in a car alone together on your way to the consulate of Monaco. Of course, we knew that something had changed between you two."

Eleanor pushes for the answers he has only begun to receive and throws out explanations that cause her to tense beside him. Because maybe this was her way of punishing herself and maybe she tried to control her body so she could keep on pretending, but the very incivility of someone trying to plumb the depths of her soul is an offense because that is a place only a few chosen people are allowed to see.

Harold pushes forward the suggestion he offered up once before and throws out a solution that causes all those gathered in the Waldorf penthouse to tense. Because maybe walks amidst the vineyards would do her some good, but Harold often has a blind eye to his daughter's schemes and antics and no one here can bear to be parted from her.

"Harold, we agreed last time that Doctor Sherman was the way to handle this."

"No."

Her adamant refusal cause those who did not see her this morning – clothes stained with blood and vomit, cheeks stained with tears – to recoil in surprise because, yes, she has always hated the idea of therapy, but what person trapped in this cycle of control and self-abuse does? And it falls on him and her best friend to offer up their voices in support of her decision, to step aside when she is ready to wage her own battle.

"I will not go back to Doctor Sherman. He makes assumptions about me, about what happened in the back of that car, about Chuck."

"And so you went to him."

Words – a reminder echoing the one offered earlier – pressed upon those gathered to discuss and plan and help the one they all love and adore by her stepfather. Words – a reminder echoing the one offered earlier – opening up his eyes and forcing him to see her return to the Empire and to him as a reaction to the misunderstanding of virtual strangers about who they are and what they are together. As a means to assure herself that despite the darkness and the pain, there are still some things that will always be constant, that can never be spoken of in the past-tense, that only they will understand. A looping connection from how she went to him when she was paralyzed by indecision before the accident to how she went to him when she was paralyzed by a million emotions after the accident; a needed reminder that he is her alpha and omega just as she is his and the pull between them will always bring them back together.

And Eleanor is detailing how they will find her a new therapist and how this condition will be fixed once and for all, but all he can do is continue to stare at her as she sits in profile beside him. Continue to feel the warmth of her glow spread across his body until the darkness is pushed aside; continue to fill his lungs will with the fresh air the glimpses of what she was thinking and how she is still her despite the layers and layers of misunderstanding and grief affords him.

Phone calls are placed, arrangements with another therapist valued for both her knowledge and her secrecy are made, and announcements that those gathered have things to tend to – real or made up as a tool of escape – are made until it is just the two of them alone in the room sitting side by side.

"My mother is going to count the food on my plate again."

"When did she ever stop?"

"When I was preg—"

The word is cut off – an excursion into territory she is still not quite ready to address – and replaced by the same melancholy sadness that engulfed them before when they tried to discuss the loss of their 'us' and lacked the words needed to explain.

"She wants me to take over for her at Waldorf Designs."

The marvel in her voice is still there; the disbelief that Eleanor Waldorf of all people could have ever made such a one-eighty on her daughter being the face of Waldorf Designs still nestled so deep. A sentiment he understands all too well because who would have thought that Bart Bass would ever leave his controlling shares of Bass Industries to his son?

And he wants to take her out to celebrate, to offer up a bottle of Dom and do all the things he would have done before, but alcohol is another a reminder of what they lost and, besides, the unladylike yawn engulfing her face reminds them both of how exhausting – emotionally and physically – today has been. But her hand tugs on his when he murmurs words about leaving and letting her sleep; her eyes glistening with tears tug on his heart when they look up at him and ask him to stay.

He does not carry her bridal style or over the shoulder in one of their games up the stairs, but her fingers squeeze against his and her hand radiates heat against his and the door to her bedroom shutting behind them cues them both for the start of a well-rehearsed dance.

Body on autopilot and working from memory as he retrieves a certain pair of pajamas from the bottom of the drawer. Body on autopilot and immediately leaning into hers as she stands in front of the mirror, sweeps aside her hair, and asks him to assist with her zipper.

Eyes on autopilot as they watch the dress fall and bunch at her feet only to rise up and watch her eyes flutter shut in the mirror. Hands on autopilot as they reach out to tug the hand moving to cover her body from his gaze away because he thought this reaction had been vanquished long ago, because he thought—

Cuts and bruises faded long ago, but the scars of what might have been are still etched across her skin. Nothing angry or red like the scar that used to zigzag across his head or the one that continues to zigzag across his lower abdomen, but the small fold of skin resting just above the lace of her panties remains despite the promise of what it meant having left her body many weeks ago.

"It won't go away. It was supposed to go away."

Anguish cloaks each and every word. His lips whisper words of apology because he failed to notice it this morning when he peeled her clothes from her body. There had been too much blood, too many specks of drying vomit, and too many problems for him to notice each and every one, but the excuses feel weak even as he tells them to himself because he knows every inch of her body, mind, and soul and he should have noticed this.

And then he is spinning her around and holding her in his arms; a gesture that seems to catch her off-guard because she freezes before reciprocating the gesture and burying her face in his neck. The venom dripping from his voice as he explains that Tripp will not get away without any repercussions this time because he will not allow Nate's cousin to continue to hurt the people he cares about cannot be helped even though the words he offers up are meant in comfort. But she is already moving past that, or maybe still fixated on what has to occur before she can deal with other fallout from the accident that was never really an accident.

"Some days I still feel pregnant – food turns my stomach, my body hasn't lost some of its changes – and then I remember how far along I would have been today, then I get my period and – people want me to move on but how can I when I can't stop wanting my baby?"

But he does not have an answer for her; his throat becoming tight and restricted and parched for the words he wishes he could find. Because the baby was a part of her so he loves it just as much as he loves her, and despite the number of times he tried to move on, he cannot imagine the day Chuck Bass will not love and want Blair Waldorf


	11. Part Eleven

**Author's Note: ** My apologies for the unusually long wait between updates. University deadlines snuck up on me among other things. Thank you also for the support for this story. It means more than I can put into words.

* * *

Her lips curve into just the hint of a smile while she sleeps. The corners of her mouth lifting as her cheek nuzzles against the pillows; the skin at the corner of her eyes wrinkling as her eyes squint shut even tighter with the hitch of her breath. Determination creeping into dreaming unafraid because in her dreams she is Audrey Hepburn not Betty Davis and the credits at the end of the film will not roll with her ending up alone.

The dip of the bed, the slide of hair against smooth skin, and the resolve necessary to play the leading lady manifests itself in the way her hand fists the white cloth of his undershirt and holds him in place. A commanding voice imploring that he stay cutting through sleepy yawns and casting her as the director of this movie where the script has been prewritten and she was forcefully cast as the lead. Clenched fingers unfurling only to slide across the expanse of his chest and clamp down on his shoulder; cheek no longer nuzzling against the pillow but against his shoulder.

Silken masks and heavy curtains pulled firmly tight over eyes and windows forsaken in favor of the kind of morning she used to share with him where crooked, sleepy smiles stretched into grins and then into gasps as his mouth and fingers slid against her skin until she glowed just as brightly as the new day's sun.

Nothing quite so bright and cheerful happens this morning; the sun fighting to shine through the gray of winter reflected outside and inside. But his fingers are threading through her hair, his heart is strumming beneath her palm, and the tears that soaked his shirt and streaked across her face dried sometime in the night.

"Dorota will chase me out with a broom again if she finds me in your bed."

Seventeen and not as sneaky as they thought because one week of dangerous liaisons was interrupted by an irate maid yelling in Polish with a broom poised to attack in her hand and refuge had to be found in the back of his limo. Many times. And maybe she is supposed to laugh, but her nose skims against his jawline as she rolls further into his embrace and her confession that Dorota no longer dares to enter her room adds a somber tone to the early morning. The clothes piled on the chaise lounge, the full wastebasket, and the specks of dirt on the carpeting backing up her solemn claim.

Her head twists to bury in his neck; her eyes – swollen, puffy, and red – twist shut to bury away the remaining tears lest the emotional, dark side of her be exposed once move. Yet exposure is found not just in the strap of her bra falling off her shoulder or her leg sliding up the length of his leg to toe a dangerous line she is not sure she is prepared to cross, but in the way the free hand moving to stop her wandering leg brushes against her belly. Against that bubble of fat she has pinched and condemned and punished herself for over and over again in a desperate wish for the last physical reminder of what could and should have been to leave her causing her to stiffen in his embrace. Those dark desires whispering and taunting in her ear and striping away her defenses against a weakness that women like her should not have.

"Don't."

The single word is growled in her ear; the harsh grumble sending a chill up and down her spine only matched in temperature by the cold fingers brushing against the nape of her neck through the curtain of her hair. Ice against the fire. The niceties of last night where he held her reverently and caught her tears with his shirt, his fingers, and then his lips replaced with the reminder that she made a promise and she is not allowed to do this to him.

Lashes lift to allow dark eyes to connect with those darker still; lips part to allow an apology to escape. But the chilled air extinguishes her spoken emotions and leaves her shivering under his gaze until she is repeating a promise she is not wholly sure she can make and, true to form, extracting a promise from him that he will not leave the presence of the Queen unless banished by her own hand.

"If your mother finds me—"

And those are the words that extract a coquettish laugh and cause somber lips to lift into a smile because despite his uniqueness, he still falls for the cliché of a debaucher afraid of being caught by a parent. A rarely home, rarely aware parent who surprised them both when she arrived back from Paris, sat opposite of her daughter in the dining room, and asked as she delicately sipped her coffee if Charles would be joining them or continue to hide up in her room.

A coquettish laugh that becomes lodged in her throat when the door to the bathroom is pushed open startling them both. The way she frantically clutches covers to her chest – a fervent attempt to hide her body from the sunshine bursting into their lives – causing the blonde to gasp and turn away with her hand quickly rising to shield her eyes and a twisted grimace forming on her lips. Too much skin and not enough fabric leading the blonde to connect dots that no longer exist.

"Serena, how many times have I told you? Ladies knock!"

"Sorry, I didn't realize – I didn't know you two were back to – ugh, my eyes!"

Befuddled looks morphing into bemused ones because her best friend's reactions have always been over the top given her history. Rebuttals left half-started and half-spoken as the blonde bats away the words and covers her ears because, ew, she does not want to hear anymore, thank you very much.

"I was going to ask if you wanted to get croissants before we go to your appointment."

One word, two letters spoken in a reminder that she is not alone in the darkness because he will catch her tears and she will hold her hand and they will make sure she has all the support necessary to beat the villains starring opposite of her in a life that is decidedly not an Audrey Hepburn movie.

The covers slip from her grasp as her stomach rumbles and then twists painfully at the suggestion of food. A war within continuing its long and arduous slog through muck and mire because another day means another battle. The covers slip from her grasp even further as cool fingers trail up and down her naked back in an attempt to get her attention, as cool fingers lift the strap of her bra and return it to its rightful place on her shoulder.

"You need to eat."

There are many things she needs and this particular one is placed at the bottom of that list, but he is looking at her with equal parts pleading and demanding and even Serena is peeking through her fingers as she waits for her reply. The first step is the hardest, and it comes in a relenting nod that causes darkness to fade because sunshine beams. Yet darkness returns because sunshine leaves, and then it is just the two of them – mostly healed and mostly broken – left to grapple with the idea of exiting this bed and leaving the presence of the only one who understands.

"Do you want to shower?"

So much of her wants to say yes, to feel soapy hands slide across her skin until hot breathes become lost in the rising haze of hot steam. But there are darker parts still that cannot be touched – not now, not today – as she finds herself murmuring words about how she will shower later. After her appointment but before her class in the gap of time largely eaten by an avoidance of Central Park as she travels from the Upper East Side to the Upper West.

"Do you need to—"

Eyes dip along with his words and her stomach twists once more at the reminder of how the color red still runs and permeates her life. The squeeze of is hand directing her twisted emotions elsewhere; the syllables of her words directing features twisted in concern to her closet.

A dress that will flare from her waist and cover the flaw she is not ready to face let alone allow the world to see. Dark La Perlas and darker tights that will shield her just long enough to make a more graceful escape should the events of the appointment with Doctor Sherman happen again. A headband to hold back hair she has not had the patience or motivation to care for and sculpt as she always did before.

And hands that carry her hold her steady when her eyes catch in the mirror and raw emotions leave her normally poised posture shaky and bending under the weight of physical and emotional scars that have yet to heal. Scars that will be picked apart by a psychologist who undoubtedly will not understand because she was not there until they become fresh wounds she needs him to lick and heal.

And, even before she can ask, he anticipates her needs with the promise to meet her following her appointment, to offer her refuge in the back of his limo where no one has to learn to behave first and no one but he and a chauffeur paid handsomely to ignore the sounds coming from the back will learn about and see all the emotions and shame and desires she does not want anyone else to know.

* * *

Despite the thickness of her coat and tights, despite the years of practice, the cold stone serving as her throne chills her and sends a shiver through her body. Shoulders bump as best friends lean into each other; the warm glow of the only person allowed to share a step with her dampened by the nipping cold wind blowing hair into their faces and crumbs of their breakfast into the crowd of pigeons clustered at the base of the steps.

The steps have always been the place the brunette returns to when she needs to make herself feel better, and Serena pondered aloud with a teasing laugh and another bump of their shoulders if that process could be rushed by a seat alone at a higher elevation on the steps given how cold it is today. But wordless responses are found in the way she picks at the croissant in her hand – buttery layers peeled apart until they become crumbs scattered by the wind – because she has graduated from the time when ruling with an iron fist and yogurt in the other hand was her biggest concern.

Yet some things never change, especially how obvious it is that Serena wants to broach an uncomfortable topic because she sweeps aside her long, blonde hair, shifts her gaze, and tries to interject words and phrasings that are sure to make the brunette laugh before mentioning the guy she spotted in bed with her best friend. Words and syllables laced with question marks and judgment that cause the brunette to rear away from her, to raise her defenses against opinions that have come to color her life.

"If it helps, okay, but I'm practically the poster child of coping with sex and drugs, and Chuck's not exactly—"

"He was in the car, Serena. He's the only one that understands."

"Help me understand then. Because Doctor Sherman was a disaster, croissants and yogurt on the MET steps aren't helping, and this isn't about our crazy mothers so I don't know what else to do or say to help, B. I don't know how to relate."

Confusion clouds across the blonde's features because the name that falls from the brunette's lips has been dead between them for years – no longer employed in backstabbing schemes, no longer agonized over in tearful confessions. The closest approximation to how she feels because family and friends assured Serena over and over again that what happened that night was not her entirely her fault, but the guilt and the shame and the pain ate away at the blonde just as it keeps eating away at the brunette. Reckless actions undertaken as a way of punishing oneself or forgetting or pretending when the second process is not an option.

Of course, it is not an exact comparison. More abstract and theoretical and easily dismissed if thought about for too long – after all, Serena barely knew Peter and never constructed a future where he was beside her – yet she watches as her best friend's features begin to crumple in a way she knows all too well and a tiny flicker of understanding sparks between them. Free hands slipping out of coat pockets to entwine fingers, to hold and squeeze as shoulders bump once more and the two sisters lean into each other for support as the world moves on briskly past them. And the peeled apart croissant and paper naked is eventually crumpled in her hand – balled and hidden away just like her emotions – when the script calls for the scene to change and she must push herself off of the steps and allow Serena, who is finally beginning to understand, to escort her to her appointment.

* * *

Doctor McCormick's office is warmer than Doctor Sherman's – a color scheme of calming blues and honey taupe in stark contrast to cold chrome and sterile white, a comfortable couch making it impossible to hold such a reserved and distant posture, and a doctor that smiles while she waits for her patient to speak. Introductory questions answered in monosyllabic words abutted by the warning that she does not believe in psychoanalysis and will not be one of those people who spills all their secrets immediately until silence consumes the room. Until she begins to think that she just might be able to end this session without confronting her condition or confronting yet another person who does not understand what it means to be a part of a duo made up of three words and thirteen letters.

Eyes darting around the room and appraising the degrees – Columbia and Yale, she notices immediately – hanging on the wall, the books on the shelves, and the decorations tucked in between. Figurines and potted plants and a sign about how when it is darkest, one can see the stars causing her to roll her eyes so quickly that Doctor McCormick nearly misses her reaction.

"That's a lie. There were no stars in Prague."

Dead ends, looming deadlines, and consuming darkness as the idea of living without him morphed from a temporary predicament to permanent situation. The brightest moment immediately darkened by the way she comforted her pain with chocolates and macaroons and with an easily triggered gag relax summonsed by the sound of his voice, by the realization that love does not make everything simple.

Because the great sonnets are performed by actors around the world, the great novels keep their bleary-eyed readers up until three in the morning, and the great loves sends their participants on suicide missions to Tuscany, Paris, Australia, and Prague. To places where the stars do not shine because they do not exist.

"Are there stars in Manhattan?"

The question rankles her because, of course, there are stars – bright stars she tried to align herself with, brighter stars she tried to dim several times because they make her pale in comparison and rob her of her crown, and the dark sky that offered up a happily ever after found only in classic film and gave her the opportunity to be the brightest star of them all.

A star she no longer feels capable of being because she's broken and shattered and has no one to blame but herself. A star she no longer feels she has to right to be because she painted the sky an even darker shade of black and removed all the purple that appears with the setting sun and rising stars.

Except no one does black like Chuck Bass, and he does not seem to care about anything other than returning the color and brightness back into her life. Carries her through tears and temptation; carries her despite failed schemes and faulty pacts. Picks up the pieces and waits with her in the shadows until she is ready to shine again.

So far it has not be enough – one step forward, two steps back – as the people in her life move forward and she tries to follow their lead only to be reminded of what she lost. A scar her fingers can still find through his thick hair, a stretched out piece of skin her eyes cannot avoid in the mirror, and a trickle of blood between her legs her brain conjures into the river that robbed her of him and the 'us' she desperately wants.

"My baby died."

The words feel foreign yet the choking noose of the sentiment behind them is all too familiar and felt throughout her entire body. The stark reality she does not want to face that was so easily avoided by focusing on him and ignoring the paparazzi crowding around the hospital, by bargaining with the devil in Australia and negotiating the language gap of the hometown hospital of the prostitute turned savior, and by jamming her finger down her throat in between avoiding him and avoiding her mother's bitch of an assistant as she turns her life into a movie that people might actually want to see.

"People keep telling me that it wasn't my fault. That the combination of Nate's cousin tampering with the car and the paparazzi chasing us at high speeds are to blame for the crash. But my baby died and Chuck almost died and I'm so focused on the picture of the 'us' I crafted in my head that I don't know who I am without."

Her hand snakes from her lap to catch her falling tears and brush them aside because the parts of her railing against psychologists and their pseudo-understanding of her life will not allow her to become dependent upon Doctor McCormick and her offered tissues. Her other hand presses against her stomach because the parts of her railing against facing reality will not allow what little of the croissant she did eat to settle. Her eyes cast downward to the purse and then sweep away because the parts of her railing to call for a cab to take her to Brooklyn or Queens or someplace where she can continue to deny, deny, deny are reminded of the broken, unusable BlackBerry left behind during her hasty escape from the Empire after Gossip Girl's meddlesome blast.

"Blair, that picture? I want you to think of it like a puzzle where the last piece is missing. An empty hole leaving your favorite painting incomplete. My job is to help you smooth out the edges, to remove the jagged lines that cut and slice you. The hole is always going to be there, but the hope is that one day you will be able to see the whole picture again instead of just the flaw of a missing piece."

* * *

Gleaming limos and high heels on sidewalks conjure up expectations of smarmy greetings about how he would love to give her a ride spoken through an open window. The sight of him leaning up against the limo waiting to intercept her on her walk down the avenue conjures up expectations of carefully wrapped presents and words he once could not say. Yet expectations have become moving pieces in their lives – her hopes and her dreams shaping the picture of what was and what could have been now failing to frame the picture of what is today.

Because, for today, she would love for him to give her a ride in the strictly transportation from here to there kind of way. For today, his present is wrapped in plastic and capped with a twist tie instead of a bow. For today is about moving forward rather than repeating the past, about returning the brightest star to the sky, about picking up the pieces and rebuilding a masterpiece.

And, for today, expectation has become anticipation in the form of a bag of day old bread purchased from her favorite bakery and a ride to Central Park offered to her before she can finish forming the question she needs and longs to ask. One hand presses to the small of her back while the other opens the back door of the limo for her; one hand encloses around his when they are seated side by side in the limo while the other cups his cheek to smooth away the trace of lipstick left on his cheek.

"You read me like tea leaves, Chuck Bass."

She leaves off the words about how he manages to do so even when she has lost sight of herself because it has always been an unspoken understanding between them since the first time he came back with his tie perfectly knotted, since the first time she stood on that stage, peeled off her headband, and danced for him. The ability to look into each other's eyes and see the parts of their souls no one else can see sustaining them through their darkest thoughts and helping them return even after such terrible actions.

So he does not have to ask if the appointment with Doctor McCormick helped and she is not required to explain why she plans to go back, although she does with a soft laugh about how soon she will be a new version of herself that attends therapy, does yoga, and adopts a scruffy animal with unknown pedigree from the pound. And she does not have to ask why and he is not required to explain when he turns to her and says that he loves the old Blair, the current Blair, and this possible future Blair all the same, especially if they can practice his favorite brand of yoga.

"Dorota really will chase you out of my room with a broom then."

"Just so long as afterwards she's back to cleaning your room and bringing us breakfast in bed."

A small laugh escaping just as the limo slows to a stop because the threat of being forced to bring Mister Chuck breakfast in bed has been a well-used tool in her arsenal and the maid would launch into a tirade against liars in her native tongue if she heard Mister Chuck acting like she was ever, in fact, punished in such a cruel way. A small frown returning just as the back door is opened by the man seated beside her because the threat of being rejected the way she rejected her beloved Dorota causes her normally tenacious self to freeze and ponder over possible miscalculations in this scheme.

"Do you want me to come with or—"

She allows herself to cave into her weakness and accept his outstretched hand; she allows herself to lean on the support of those in life and accept that she cannot always be the one that does the saving. And so as she strolls arm in arm through the park with him past the energetic children, frazzled nannies, and busy tourists instagramming every moment, she tries not to focus on the memories of what was and the possibilities of what could have been but on the moments that make up the picture of today.

Focus on one minute, one step, one beat of the heart shared and held in their clasped hands until they reach the place in this park that Dorota would bring her to when she needed to calm down and now brings her own daughter to in the period of time between the end of preschool and the beginning of Vanya's shift as the evening doorman.

The happy couple that became the happy family she wants desperately to be glad for and supportive of. Yet the threads of sadness inside her over the fact that she was not the happy couple and now she is not the happy family are starting to stitch together in a blanket that threatens to cover them all; her steps forward faltering at the beginning of the path leading to the duck pond.

But tiny eyes sparkling at mid-laugh catch sight of her, and legs still plump with baby fat pound against the sidewalk with each excited shout of her name. A quickly moving ball of fire – a star in her own right – colliding with the much older young lady who shares her mother's affection.

"Miss Blair, Miss Blair!"

Affection that is reflected in the much taller brunette's eyes as she sinks down to greet Dorota and Vanya's little girl with a hug and compliments Ana on the beauty of the accessory in her hair. Affection that grows as the little girl shyly buries her face in her neck when she is reintroduced to the man who makes up the other half of the couple, if you can call them that, currently struggling to be happy, as the little girl shyly grins when she is informed that Mister Chuck brought bread to feed the ducks with.

"Mama miss you, Miss Blair."

"I miss your mama, too, Miss Ana."

Her eyes sweep up from the little girl to look at the happy couple standing just behind their daughter, to hold those of the woman who raised her and therefore can see the apology masked behind her actions and lurking behind her eyes. She rises up to stand as Vanya and Chuck escort Ana off to feed the ducks. Her words faltering as she looks from Dorota's face to her burgeoning belly and then returning as she looks back at the woman who kissed and doctored her scrapes and bruises when her own mother was too busy to be bothered.

"When I felt your baby kick, it was like I was back at your wedding watching how happy you and Vanya are and realizing how unhappy I was. I found my right love, my good love and I had my baby and I was on my way to having everything you want me to have and being like you. The more refined, less service-industry oriented version of you. And then it was all gone and I – I couldn't face you and watch you be happy. I tried, but you and I both know I've never been good at that."

And arms are enfolding around her in a hug and comforting words are being whispered in her ear because Dorota does not need her to be happy couple or happy right now, she just needs her to know that she loves her, will be there when Miss Blair is ready to have her back in her life, grieves for her, and will continue to support and encourage Mister Chuck while she is not.

"Chuck?"

"Mister Chuck was in car. Don't know what he said, but he was in car so he only one who understands. Only one you would break off engagement for. Only one you would book flight to Australia for. You help him be Chuck Bass when he run away. Now his turn to help you be Blair Waldorf again."

Her eyes sweep past Dorota's head to stare at the man crouched down next to Ana tossing chunks of bread into the pound, at the man whose gaze sweeps to her and starts to stand when he spies the tears rimming her eyes with worry and concern etched in his face, at the man who halts with a single shake of her head because he knows when to push and when to give. And the words to correct Dorota immediately slip past her lips because Chuck is already helping her figure out how to be Blair Waldorf again.


	12. Part Twelve

More than one million people commute downtown or head uptown with millions more traveling across bridges and through tunnels and creating the city that never sleeps. A pulsing energy celebrated and recreated night after night in the hotels and nightclubs dotting the island – the ones he owns, the ones he toiled away most of junior high and all the years before Victrola in, and the ones he only visits during Lost Weekends and following those moments when he tries to drown in three bottles of scotch. Where his signature introduction is met with a smile rather than a look of disgust or of fear of retribution from the queen because dollar signs shine in their eyes and redemption does not go hand in hand with reformation.

Except her eyes shine at the thought of crowns – self-made, snatched away, or descendant from a historical lineage because she is Grace Kelly and Grace Kelly is she – and reformation became a prerequisite following many years of redemption, of words he could not say, of trying to go up in flames together. Developing into the kind of person who can apologize for all their dark thoughts, wicked actions, and failings without any sort of expectation; developing into the kind of person who knows when to cry uncle.

A phone call made in the middle of the night forcing him to trade in his perch high above the city for a room with a single window in a building looking out over a quiet street. An unassuming place the occasional person hurrying down the sidewalk would never pause to give a second glance; an unassuming place that tears down the assumptions he and she and the world have made about him.

His attempt to stay out in front of those assumptions that tore him down in the past – the sudden and complicated return of a woman claiming to be his mother; the uncle lurking in the background; the urge to scheme and concentrate on revenge; the woman he wished would have a man who treats her kinder than him only to be told by her that no man can and wishes still that someday she will be able to forget all their great disasters because he will carry those memories for the rest of his life and only wants her to be happy.

Except what is mere happiness in the face of all that constitutes Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck? That burning desire, that spark of electricity, that undeniable pull that results in diverging paths converging once again at every opportune and inopportune moment because no matter how much they fight it, they will never forget how they loved each other once, how they love each other still. Because she taught him to never give up on those you love and his therapist taught him to never give up on himself.

"It's a feeling not a fact."

Six words breathed against the glass – a veil of mist appearing because the words are nothing more than hot air and the cold air swallows them whole – In reply to his therapist's question. Six words meant to remind him how the emotions and assumptions he projects onto the situation are not always true. Because while guilt and blame went hand in hand with the decision to treat her like property, to lose his temper the night she became engaged to another man, and to jump to conclusions and sleep with the first available woman, the decision to get in that car, to answer her question with a selfish yet honest answer, and to hold her hand while dreaming unafraid for the first time in a long time exists entirely outside that realm with its own facts and feelings

"Everything you've told me today, Chuck – guilt and blame rests with other men, particularly the one who sabotaged the town car. You feel this way because you're grieving, because you empathize with Blair's loss. Yet it doesn't sound to me like she's blaming you, correct?"

"She blames herself."

The truth is laid bare for the therapist far quicker than it was for him – facts and feelings he searched for weeks and months to find only discovered in the way her hands tremble as they touch him, in the way apologies he does not need to hear have become constant whispers in his ear, in the way she ran until she could no longer walk just to keep him safe from her. Until she was stumbling and falling with the burning desire to expel her sorrow and pain the only way she knows how down a lonely, dark alley s where no one was willing to hold her hand.

Except for him.

And Serena, Dorota, Eleanor, Nate, Cyrus, Harold, Roman, Humphrey, Lily, and all those whom she considers family and friends that outstretch their hands to her no matter how many times she snaps at them. All of them willing to help her grieve and coupe and adjust to the new normal and, eventually, return to the being the one who never gives up on those she loves.

"I know our 'us' has changed, but I don't want to stand in her living room and apologized for giving up on us again. She fought for me, for us for years. Now it's my turn to fight for her."

"And getting her to go to therapy, encouraging her to reconcile with family and lean on friends are both important steps, but—"

He braces himself for the caveat, for the counseling that he maintains some distance between them while she heals because few understand how the pain and sorrow is too deep and how he can turn away from her no more than she can pretend to be whole in front of him. Evenings spent sleeping side by side with legs entangled and hands interlaced not only allowing both of them to sleep but to avoid the choking grip of nightmares where old ghosts – empty shells of themselves that cut and slice as they try to pick up the remnants of their 'us' torn apart in a cruel twist to the game – come out to play.

"But remember our discussion of the importance of conversation? You know what happens when you try to solve problems on your own, when you two don't figure out what is a feeling and what is a fact together."

Because an army of two is stronger than an army of one, because retreating out of fear that she will reject what she sees only leads to his worst fear becoming his living nightmare. Lessons he has learned in the harshest way possible, and mistakes he does not want to make again.

His therapist is offering to proctor such a conversation because she needs to know about his issues just as much as he needs to know about hers. Yet his face twists into a grimace at the thought of sitting on this couch beside her and hearing her state that while she does not want him, she does want her fiancé to be more like him. His body recoiling at the idea of allowing a session with his therapist to ever come close to suggesting that she pulled him into the darkness once again, especially not while she is still teetering on the edge with fingers slipping past ruby red lips despite the hawkish watch of family and friends.

"I know she's still purging, but—"

"You also know that's not going to stop overnight."

The doctor's insistence on repeating facts he already knows stirs up half a million emotions – anger, grief, annoyance, blame, sorrow – because he wishes that reality was malleable. That the infamous Chuck Bass with all his money and all his suaveness could snap his fingers and immediately make her stop hurting herself and him in the process. But nothing has ever come easy with them – the pieces of their hearts left all over the world from the Hamptons to Paris and from Prague to the top of New York's most iconic building serving as a testimony to that one singular fact. And the city that never sleeps may be sleeping now, but a long time ago his heart was stolen by a girl who recast the pulsing energy of a midtown nightclub into a breathtaking glow and he will do anything to be able to stand there in awe of her once more.

"I don't want to destroy the progress she's already made. She—that glow I love is returning."

Glimpses of it found in the way excitement lifts her voice ever so slightly as she tell him about her day at Waldorf Designs or in the sight of her strolling through the quad of Columbia with classmates eager to hear her take on personnel management because she served as chief executive officer of the Upper East Side since their sophomore year of high school. Or, more accurately – albeit unofficially – managed and control minions and peers long before she ever stepped foot in the hallowed halls of Constance. Glimpses of it found in the way she laughs with her best friend and in the sight of her curled in his embrace as another day inserts itself between now and the day they lost their 'us' and closes the gap between now and the future taking shape in the darkness.

"You cannot nor should you prioritize her at a detriment to yourself."

His head shakes in immediate disagreement because he is trying so hard not to be the selfish person he used to be who placed his wants and his wishes higher than his love for her. Because, yes, he survived the worst thing that ever happened to him but it cost him more than blood and tears. Casted him out into shadows so long that her glow barely touched the parameter until he turned himself inside out and found the light within. A light that will never be quite so strong or so bright or so warming as hers.

"You prioritized yourself at a detriment to her and to your relationship in the past. How is this different?"

"Because I would sell everything I own and steal the rest if it meant that she could have her happiness back. She wouldn't have to manipulate me into doing it. She wouldn't even have to ask."

A fact the doctor begins to dispute citing how her decision to save him – her own happiness be damned – exasperated old wounds and torn open new ones until blood trailed from New York to Australia to Prague and back again. A fact the doctor turns around into an indictment of the road they are currently traveling down because focusing on her and ignoring everything else only serves to leave demons lurking in the shadows.

"And what about your progress, Chuck? Do you think Blair would want to see the progress you've made destroyed?"

And the answer is a resoundingly negative roar because allowing himself to slip and create and opportunity for his demons to overtake him once more would only serve to take her feelings of guilt and blame and turn them into facts he would be unable to deny. Facts that would only serve to call into question the one fact he wants to remain completely undeniable forever – that she was and is and always will be the lightest thing that ever came into his life.

* * *

The golden hue of the setting sun kisses the two words written in a vibrant red dotting the skyline of the Upper West Side as the time of day when nightclubs and hotels slowly awaken and ready themselves to greet the city that never sleeps begins to dawn. The start of a pulsing energy he used to celebrate and revel in now forsaken for the quiet, electrifying moment where she will slip into the sheets beside him, curl her arm around his torso, and bury her face into his neck until the world slows down and sleep comes easily given the knowledge that he will start a new day with more than just his dog by his side.

Although, tonight Monkey does not run up to greet him as the elevator doors slide open; the traitorous dog abandoning him for the opportunity to curl up on the couch beside her. Her textbooks and highlighters are spread across the glass coffee table, and her head bent in such deep concentration that only the thump of Monkey's tail against her leg can pull her attention away from the merits of realism versus impressionism in art. Her hair sweeps against the top of her green highlighter – important dates, names, and places in her color-coded system – as her head turns to look at him; her eyes sweep from the complicated expression on his face to look at the array of studying materials spread out around the room.

"Roman may be French, but he does not know his Renoir from his Pissarro. I needed a place to study where I wouldn't be subjected to his assistance or the sight of Daddy in a sweatshirt."

The reference causes his lips to lift upwards into a small smile because her father and Roman have spent most of their visit dressed in the distinctive blue color of Columbia. Their support for her return to university outweighing Harold's love for his alma mater, Roman's love of fashion, and the utter disgust of the Waldorf women at the sight of the bunched up sweatshirt hoods peeking out over the collar of their perfectly tailored coats.

"I still can't believe that is the only item he could find at the bookstore. He could have at least bought one without a hood."

A crime of fashion ranking just below tights as pants because far too often the female students of NYU and Columbia pair the two together. A crime of fashion she wasn't even willing to commit for a mere role play of college girl and big man on campus because such a crime would ruin her reputation and scar her for life.

"When's your exam?"

"Next Thursday."

His question is asked as he takes a seat beside her on the couch – Monkey barely lifting his head in acknowledgment – and her response is met with a pause in his movement as he contemplates another chance to place her and her priorities above all else, another opportunity to offer up his assistance in the simplest of ways.

But her hands are curling around his shoulders and guiding him backwards to rest against her. Offering up her lithe and frail body as a pillar of strength on which he can lean. Or, so he hopes because he loathes too lean too much despite the fear of the surface beneath his own feet crumbling until he can no longer stand. And the delicate fingers of her hand stroke against his cheek while the fingers of her other hand loosen the perfectly knotted tie around his neck. Her words inquiring about his difficult day beckoning to the parts of him that cannot deny her just as Monkey's nudge of his right hand beckons to the parts of him that cannot deny the animal the attention he so craves.

"Is this about the post on Gossip Girl?"

His hand instinctively slides to the phone in his pocket to check for another post because his therapist holds him to a strict no cellphone rule during their session leaving him in the dark for two hours about the lies and gossip spread by the anonymous blogger. The same blogger whose depravity has begun to outpace his own as the detailer of their lives posts any and every piece of evidence – real and made-up – she can find to prove her innocence in triggering the events of that night.

"I know it must be awkward having Gossip Girl posts déclassé photos of Nate and your mother—"

"Diana's not my mother."

A flimsy house of cards resting on the even flimsier research abilities of the self-appointed chronicler of the Upper East Side that came crashing down with the simplest of investigations because dates and times lined up for this new woman claiming to be his mother to have a bouncing baby boy in January but not one in May. A fact not even the big bad wolf known as Bart Bass could have altered.

And he knows enough about her to know that her apology about this new revelation is flimsy at best because she encouraged him to go down the path not taken once before and watched it lead him into the darkest thicket where thorns snagged and tore at them both. But he also knows enough about her to know that her apology is heartfelt and earnest because she knows his history and watched it become colored with the desires and longings of the little boy he pretended not to be.

"I went to Our Sisters of Mercy today."

There is nothing merciful about the way the name of the witness to their tragedy feels like a noose around his neck – syllables, letters, and tiny prayers becoming a hoarse whisper – as he twists his head up to look at her. There is nothing merciful about the emotions flying across her face as she tries to settle on one or the nails scraping across his cheek as her hand releases its gentle embrace.

He repeats to her what she already knows – that his guy down at the twenty-fourth precinct needed their medical records for the completely by the books takedown of the effer who sabotaged their town car and wrecked their dreams. Who strolled in like a thief in the night and who now will be forced to pay for the way he hurt them so mercilessly because the opportunity arises for a third time to be the charm

"The nurse on duty couldn't find my file. Something about a possible misspelling or a glitch in the system. The only 'Bass' the came up in her search was first name 'Jack'."

"From when he donated the blood you needed."

"That's what I thought, too, but the nurse wouldn't divulge information about his records to me."

"So you charmed her with your 'I'm Chuck Bass' routine into setting aside her morals and passing along HIPAA-protected information."

Her blasé way of outlining his next step lifts some of the tension in the air, lifts back the curtain between this Blair and the pre-accident Blair who enjoyed a good scheme and rewarded his bad behavior. A mischievous glint returning to her eye as he explains that without her on hand to smear her lipstick, rattle off a list of the cornucopia of pharmaceuticals kept in Eleanor's bathroom, and distract the nurse with misplaced concern, he had to settle for the simple yet tried and true distraction of a powerful businessman wanting to meet with management.

But the pulsing energy of the nightclub, hotel, and city below is lost as the pause in his explanation envelopes the entire room in silence, and it falls to delicate fingers pushing his chin upward to defibrillate the electric connection between them. His eyes forced to look into hers and see the desire to understand and support through the cloudy haze of self-centered emotions; his body forced to lean into hers and grasp onto the hand still being offered to him in comfort.

"Jack tested positive for Hepatitis C and since I don't have it—"

"I don't understand."

Yet the rolling waves of anger and pain in her eyes causing limbs to jerk away and bodies to separate makes it clear to him that she understands perfectly. That all of their confusion as to why his devious uncle has yet to make an appearance and claim his prize after she reneged so completely on their deal can be easily explained by the simple fact that Jack Bass did not donate the blood that saved his life.

He shifts to the edge of the couch prepared to go after her, but she turns on her heels and heads back in the direction from which she came until the sight before him becomes a dizzying stride of bright red tights pacing back and forth that causes Monkey to bury his face into his paws. The desire to fly to Australia and to dole out his best friend's favorite form of retribution melds with his desire to return to the boardroom of Bass Industries and crush his uncle financially from within because the days and weeks he spent without her were tantamount to the worst kind of torture. The blame and guilt that ate away at him and stole heartbeats and meaning from his life flaring up once more because the emotions are clearly facts in this scenario.

"So Jack just manipulated me for what? He didn't get BI or the Empire."

But he received something far more valuable – the opportunity to watch his nephew be turned inside out without having to break a sweat or spill a drop of blood in the process. But he doesn't have the heart to tell her that; concentrates instead on the way her emotions are melding into facts indistinguishable from the rest.

"All I wanted was to save you. I made a deal with the devil and left you behind and punished myself over and over again."

The twitch of her hand upwards towards her mouth underscores her point that she punished herself and continues still; the twitch of her hand serving as the catalyst to send him rising from the couch and pulling her into his embrace. Yet soothing words of understanding and camaraderie in anger cause her twist away from him because the facts are fueling more than just her anger. A crushing blow to the story she has written for their lives where she wore her white hat and went all in, stayed away in the hope that he would grow to hate her and someday find a woman who would treat him kinder than her. Who wouldn't turn him so inside out that he is left bleeding in an alleyway in Prague or dying in the backseat of a town car; who wouldn't dangle a dream in front of him only to snatch it away over and over again.

"The car crash wasn't your fault, Blair. It was Tripp's for sabotaging the car, and I promise you that he will be held accountable for what he did to you and me."

"But not for what happened to the baby."

All because of a caveat written into the New York civil and penal code making it impossible for them to hold him accountable in any court outside of the one where they serve as judge and jury. A caveat that causes her fingers to curl into such tight fists it becomes impossible for him to hold her hand in the way he longs to; a caveat that causes guilt and blame to flush on her face overtaking any glimpse of the glow he longs to see.

"I was an awful mother. I spent most of my pregnancy wishing I wasn't and the rest—Dorota tried to cajole me into shopping and planning, but Louis was being distant and I was so paralyzed over the fact that I couldn't see any kind of happy future. The only time I was excited about the baby was in the car with you, and then my first thought wasn't even of the baby but of you. "

The heated words and actions exchanged between them in the past now paling in comparison to this new version of guilt and blame working in tandem to bring forth the darkness and entranting old ghosts to come out and play. The task of pushing through the onslaught and the gut reaction to hurt before he can be hurt any further taking all the strength months of therapy has impressed upon him. Yet the dimming stream of light is still there, still ready to guide him back to a place where he can continue to grow into the kind of man he can be proud of becoming, and his hands tighten around hers left she become like sand in an hourglass – slipping through his fingers until nothing is left and the moment is over.

"I wasn't lying when I said you'd be an amazing mother, and I don't believe for one moment that you were ever on pair with Elizabeth Fisher or your mother or even Lily. You wouldn't have chosen to keep if the baby if you didn't love it. You wouldn't have found out the biological father if you didn't want to give the baby a chance at a family. You wouldn't have called me or taken my hand if you didn't think that I would be able to make you and your baby happy. Blame Tripp or me or Gossip Girl for the crash, but don't ever blame yourself for not loving the baby enough or believe for one minute that is the reason why we are not debating names and schools right now."

And the tears clustering in the corners of her eyes begin to fall; hot and salty droplets of water he catches with his fingers and his lips like a dehydrated man in the middle of a drought. A man so concentrated on sedating his thirst that he barely registers the way her head turns just a millimeter to the left and her trembling lips brush against his ear until words are whispered in his ear.

"You've done some terrible things in the past, Chuck Bass, but don't believe for one minute that I would ever blame you for what happened because in the moments before, you made me happier than I have ever been."


End file.
